


Incremental annihilation

by Septdeneuf



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Body Horror, Existentialism, For a smut scene you have been warned, Fridge Horror, I feel weird tagging the exact smut things that happen so let's just go with that one, I'll probably come up with some more tags to add as this goes along, I'm amazed that that specific thing is a tag that exists already, Lemon, Love Confessions, M/M, Medical Procedures, Red vs blue big bang 2017, Species Dysphoria, Suicidal Ideation, Talk of autopsy, Temporary Character Death, canon character death, discussion of suicide, it's pretty vanilla, it's vague but be warned, rating will change later, tiny bit of internalized homophobia
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-02-19
Updated: 2017-06-04
Packaged: 2018-09-25 15:04:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 16
Words: 56,245
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9825755
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Septdeneuf/pseuds/Septdeneuf
Summary: Wash and Carolina arrive too late to stop the mercs at the temple. Tucker's solution to the partial activation of the Purge doesn't exactly make everything easier.In which Wash really fucks up, Grif can't sleep and Donut won't shut up about Twilight.





	1. Chapter 1

The plan had been good. Great, in fact. Destructive and elegant and it probably would've worked like a dream. 

Except…

"Fuck!" 

"Epsilon, what is it?", Carolina barked into her helmet, but Wash had a feeling he already knew what was wrong. Maybe he had great intuition or maybe he was just a fucking pessimist. Finding the worst case scenario just wasn't as surprising to him as it was to someone who was more convinced of their own skills and successes. 

"They're already inside!" Wash wasn't completely sure how Epsilon even knew that, but, well, he wouldn't doubt it for a second. It was just his kind of luck.

"Epsilon, I need the speed boost, now!" Carolina was already blurring past Wash before she'd finished the sentence, but her radio transmission wasn't fazed by that. 

Wash pushed down the brief moment of envy for that particular piece of equipment and sprinted as fast as he could across the light bridge. It probably would've looked a lot more picturesque if it didn't seem like the whole temple was lit by hellfire. 

The way in was pretty straightforward, or maybe Wash's tunnel vision just didn't let him see any other paths. His heartbeat was pounding in his ears, and the stomp of his boots with each step seemed to be minutes apart no matter how hard he pushed himself. 

_Not fast enough. Not good enough._

He had to forcefully stop himself from thinking of all of the consequences of the mercs being in the damn temple before them. Focus. Run, push, forward, don't look at anything but your goal. His calves were starting to burn, but it didn't matter. His friends might all be dead already but it didn't matter. He couldn't think about that lest he lose his only chance of still saving them. 

A blur of aqua interlocked with a shadow of green told him he'd found the right place. Carolina was making liberal use of her speed unit in a vicious assault but Locus stood his ground like a mountain. But neither of them mattered. 

A big red floating symbol and an orange striped asshole casually strolling towards it like it was no big deal. The merc cast a glance back at Wash that was almost fucking cheeky, if a helmet could ever be described that way, and added some extra swagger to his gait. And Wash knew exactly what was going through his head. Carolina was waylaid by Locus. There was no way she was getting there in time to stop him, and Wash just wasn't fast enough. He didn't have a chance. 

"Hey Wash", Felix practically purred. He activated the sword with a flourish that looked way too much like how Tucker liked to use his. Wash was still running, pushing past Carolina and Locus. Epsilon was screaming something that he couldn't focus on. He vaulted over the nearest console, anything to shorten the distance. 

"Welcome to the end of the world", Felix announced and plunged the key into the floating symbol. It separated into two, and turned blue of all colors. 

This was probably what a heart attack felt like.

Felix's laugh sounded like a cartoon villain, and it would've been ridiculous if it wasn't freezing the blood inside of Wash's veins. Wash let out a scream that might've been a "no", but probably wasn't words at all. 

The knife handle was in his hand before he'd even thought about which weapon to use, and he would've never been able to explain why he'd picked it, but the weight of it in his hand grounded him. 

His aim was all instinct as his arm drew back, and the breath he let out as he threw it was louder in his helmet than any of the ambient noises. It sailed through the air in slow motion, and Felix didn't dodge. Maybe he was too busy gloating, maybe he didn't realize the danger, maybe he was just not fast enough. It didn't matter, what mattered was that he _Didn't. Dodge._

The blade buried itself right into the orange asshole's visor, at the spot where his left eye would've been. The feeling of slow motion dropped away simultaneously with Felix's body dropping to the ground. The plasma blade fizzled out but the temple control was still open and blue. 

Wash's legs were still moving, he was still running and it barely took a second before he'd grabbed the sword handle from the floor. He activated it and plunged it into the symbol. 

"Turn it off, turn it off, turn it off!", he yelled, hoping for Santa to listen, before pulling the sword back out. 

The two halves of the symbol rejoined and the control turned red again. 

For a moment, there was silence. Only Wash's ragged breathing inside his helmet. Then awareness of all the things he'd been blocking out rushed back, and he heard the noises of Carolina's and Locus's fight, the beeping of the consoles and the steady hum of the swordkey in his hand. 

"Did that work?" Hysteria was coloring his voice. "Was that enough, did that stop it?… Santa?" 

Horrible images filled his head, Carolina and him and Locus the only people left on the planet, being the only one left, _again_ , and it was absolutely his fault this time, why wasn't he faster, why wasn't he better, guess the project had a point about him being the worst, he couldn't lose another family, how could this keep… -

"The purge has been stopped." Santa's booming voice was like a life line. "However, though its activation may have been brief, it was not without consequences. Many lives have already been taken." And there was that punch to the gut, again.

 His left hand was trembling when he raised it to his helmet to radio blue team's frequency. 

"Guys, are you there?" 

There was just static for a moment. It didn't have to mean anything, the radio jammers were still active, maybe he just couldn't reach them, it didn't mean they were lying keeled over dead in a ditch somewhere. 

"Oh, hey Agent Washington. We are a little bit busy over here but maybe could you leave a message after the beep?" 

"Dude, there's no fucking answering machine in our radio." 

"Oh, well that's okay, I can just say beep. BEEEEEEEEP" 

"Dude the beep is not the fucking point of the answering machine. Also, my ears hurt now." 

"Tucker? Caboose?" His voice sounded watery to his own ears, and where did that lump in his throat come from when he'd just heard good news?

"Yeah, Wash, sup? Aren't you supposed to be keeping the mercs busy?" 

"Felix, he was already… are you guys okay?"

"Already what? Wait, are inside the temple? Dude you gotta get out, they're dropping the ship on it, now." The urgency in Tucker's voice seemed oddly misplaced to Wash's ears, until he really recognized what Tucker was saying. Right, space ship, dropping from space. That was a thing that was happening. 

"Good point", his own voice sounded weird to his ears. "Carolina, we gotta go." 

He deactivated the sword, even though he had no idea how it worked—it just seemed to read his intentions—and attached it to the mag strip on his thigh. Then he turned around and ran back toward the entrance of the control room that seemed oddly close now. The distance had been nearly insurmountable before. Maybe the room had shrank while he hadn't been paying attention. 

"Right!", Epsilon said, while Carolina delivered a series of rapid fire punches to Locus' helmet that all looked concussion worthy. "Come on!" 

Almost as soon as Wash was in reach, Carolina turned around and grabbed him by the waist. Which would just make running out even more difficult so what exactly was she trying to… 

The sickening lurch of the speed unit activating was all the explanation Wash needed. The world flashed by him in a whirl of colors as he desperately tried to wrap his arms around her to hold on. Had he really been jealous of that mod before? Scratch that, he very much preferred running to this. He barely had a second to recognize the light bridge from earlier before they were already across it. 

The deactivation of the speed unit hit him like a pelican crash and the fact that Carolina let go of him in that exact moment didn't help. He fell forward and just managed to catch himself on his hands and knees to avoid faceplanting. 

The bubble shield flared to life as Wash turned around and looked past Carolina's extended arms up at the sky. Tucker had been right, there hadn't been a second to waste. The UNSC Tartarus' massive outline was rapidly approaching, and Wash wasn't completely sure if the shield would be enough.

He didn't really have time to dwell on that, though, as the ship hit the very top of the temple's tower. The last thing he saw before he squeezed his eyes shut was a dark figure running down the light bridge towards them, but as he looked away he wasn't sure if he hadn't imagined it. Either way, he doubted Locus had a chance to make it out of this alive. 

His helmet's audio filters toned down the ambient noise levels, trying to save his hearing, but the crash was still incredibly loud. The noise of rubble hitting the bubble shield sounded like rain on a tent and with the roaring of the building collapsing he could almost imagine a thunderstorm.

He kept his eyes closed for a moment longer as the noise faded. The sudden smell of dust in his helmet's air filters told him Carolina had deactivated the shield. The scene that presented itself when he opened his eyes looked like he'd been teleported someplace completely different. Gone was the red hellfire glow and pretty much all of the scenery. There were huge pieces of rubble all around. Some moss on the ground of the neat little circle they were sitting in was the only vegetation left in view. 

"Wash, are you okay?", Carolina coughed into her headset. He had to cough himself, so he just nodded instead of answering as he pushed himself back onto his feet. His HUD showed him that the air filters were working at maximum capacity but it just wasn't enough. He switched to the suit's internal oxygen supply for the moment. 

"Tucker?", he croaked into his radio when his throat was finally free enough to talk again. "Status? Are you guys okay?" 

"Are we okay? Jesus Christ, we're fine we got like a thousand alien weapons against what's left of the space pirates, you're the ones with the two psychotic mercs and the space ships falling from the sky!" 

"We're fine, but Felix managed to activate the purge, I stopped it but Santa said people died already." Both Carolina and Epsilon were staring at him as he said that, and even though he could see neither of their expressions, he turned away rather than face them. "So I repeat, are you guys okay over there?" 

"What? No, Santa's wrong, we're all fine here. Maybe it hit the pirates first or something that would be…" Tucker's voice trailed off. "Oh…" 

 

* * *

 

If you had ever asked Tucker what the most heartbreaking words he'd ever hear would be, his answer would not have been "Get up, fatass." 

 He'd been too focussed on his radio, the tense two minutes between him yelling at Wash to get out of the temple and him calling back spent staring in suspense at the clock in his HUD. He wasn't supposed to get involved directly in the fight with the space pirates anyway, so he'd just been hiding behind a rock and hadn't had to pay attention to the fight around him. 

But after hearing what Wash had said about the purge he finally paid attention to what was going on around him, and when he realized, the words stuck in his throat. 

"We're in the middle of a fight, this is no time to be lazy! Come on, get up." If Simmons was going for a stern yell, then he was failing miserably what with the squeaking his voice was doing. 

Grif was lying on his side, and Tucker couldn't see an injury, there was no blood, no nothing. Simmons was prodding him in the side. "Grif, get the fuck up, this isn't funny!" 

The sinking feeling in his stomach had Tucker gripping the side of the rock he'd been standing behind. 

"Come on, no one even shot at us", Simmons implored with another crack in his voice. "Talk to me, dammit!" He fumbled with his teammate's helmet seals, and it seemed to take forever before he got them loose. Simmons removed the helmet gently, catching Grif's head rather than letting it fall to the ground. Like Tucker'd been taught in a first aid class in basic training ages ago. If you remove someone's helmet keep their neck straight, because it might be damaged. 

But it didn't matter. Grif's neck wasn't broken, and protecting it wouldn't make any difference. That much was obvious when his eyes were revealed. They were open, staring blankly back at them, no movement, no life in them. 

"Don't do this", Simmons croaked out. He lowered his head until his helmet was touching Grif's forehead and Tucker suddenly couldn't watch this anymore. This moment wasn't something that he should be intruding on. 

He stumbled away from the rock he'd been at. It took him a moment to get his bearings and realize that just heedlessly walking out onto a battle field wasn't the smartest idea of all. But he didn't have to worry, he realized after a moment, because no one was shooting anymore. Plenty of people were yelling, though. He could spot Andersmith near the entrance of the communications tower, the rhythmic motion of his shoulders telling him he was performing CPR on someone. It took Tucker a moment longer to realize the aqua accents on the boots sticking out from where Andersmith was kneeling. 

 _"I'm the only surviving member of green team."_ Tucker felt sick to his stomach when he remembered those words. Now his entire team was dead, and it was his fault in every single case. Maybe not directly this time, but he was more aware than ever of the weight of the alien sword strapped to his leg. If he hadn't gone swinging it around all willy nilly in the temple of armament then none of the alien technology would've ever gotten activated, and the mercs would never have found out about the purge at all. 

"A little help here, please?" Doc's voice sounded timid, but panicked at the same time. Tucker spotted him behind a crashed Hornet, fuzzing over a prone form. 

"He just crashed for no reason, and I don't read any vital signs, I don't know what happened, he wasn't very good with this thing, but he barely had any speed when he crashed, his injuries aren't that severe, I don't know why he isn't breathing…" Doc was babbling when Tucker came over. It took him a moment to recognize the face, but he noticed the yellow accents on the beige armor. Matthews.

"What do you need me to do?", Tucker asked. Though he had a feeling that it didn't matter what they did. Even if Doc had been a halfway competent medic, there was probably no saving Matthews. 

Still, he followed all of Doc's instructions, because it was better than doing nothing, right? 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello everyone! Welcome my contribution to the 2017 Red vs Blue Big Bang event! Most of this story was written during Nanowrimo 2016 and it's petty much complete, so you can expect pretty regular updates here. I'm going to be aiming for a weekly upload schedule, so stay tuned if you're interested.
> 
> Also stay tuned for the art my lovely partner JamStar will post to accompany the project.
> 
> Thanks for reading, stay tuned, and tell me what you think :)


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A big thank you to everyone who read the first chapter, and especially to RiaTheDreamer, AriRashkae, Yin, darthrevaan (Burning_Nightingale), a_taller_tale and Strudelgit for commenting!
> 
> A big thank you also to my brother @trainsinanime for beta reading the story and to @connorharrison for the lovely art accompanying this story.

They'd retreated to the New Republic's former base for reasons that Bitters hadn't bothered listening to. It was probably a well thought out strategy and reasoning that wouldn't make a difference in the grand scheme of things, anyway. Just like every other plan they'd ever made. 

The people of Chorus were just running as if in a hamster wheel while acid rain came down all around them. He honestly didn't know why they bothered anymore. Wouldn't it be better to just roll over and accept the inevitable rather than dying slowly piece by piece? Go out with a bang rather than a whimper? 

Sitting here in the old mess hall was just a stark reminder of all the people he'd sat with here before who were never coming back. Friends from the New Republic, friends from before the military, even his Captain. Here they were with what was left of two armies and it was less people than used to fill the room. Of course being scattered all over the planet as they were this wasn't all that was left. But it wasn’t much more than that, either. 

Being back here it was strange seeing all the stark white lines of the Fed uniforms sitting at the same tables as them. But with all the grime on their clothes and desperate looks on their faces they looked like they belonged here after all. 

He didn't really want to be here, sitting at this table with Jensen sobbing into Andersmith's shoulder. But he didn't really want to move, because where else could he go? Some other place to watch some other people crying? Or his old room that he'd shared with Matthews who had made a point to leave some of this things in that room because he wanted to keep having a home in case that Armonia thing fell through? 

Katie had been holding up pretty well until they'd sat down at the table and Andersmith had hugged her. And then it seemed like the floodgates had opened. Smith himself had shed some manly tears, all chiseled jaw and the opposite of an ugly crier. Bitters had never seen anyone look that composed while crying and if he hadn't known Smith for as long as he did he probably would've accused him of faking. 

It was probably healthier to do what they were doing. But Bitters had no idea how to get to that place. He didn't feel like crying. He didn't even feel sad. He felt like smashing something, like screaming, scratching his skin open to stop the flames of resentment that were simmering right underneath. Sadness was nowhere on the menu for him.

Especially when the door opened and Agent Fucking Washington walked in. His helmet was off and he looked absolutely terrible, but that didn't stop Bitters from hating him. Because they'd relied on him and Carolina to do this. They'd done their part of the plan, they'd crashed the ship and gone to the main battle at the communication tower and that was supposed to be enough. But the Freelancers had fucked it up, and for some reason no one seemed to be angry enough about that.

Bitters sent his best stink eye Wash's way, but the Freelancer wasn't looking in his direction. Not that starting shit with him would accomplish anything, except make Bitters feel better. Probably not even that, Wash could likely put him through a wall if he needed to. 

A set of arms suddenly wrapped themselves around Bitters' shoulders. He nearly jumped a foot in the air, or he would've, if the arms weren't holding him firmly. 

"There, there." 

"What the fuck?" Bitters looked up and saw blue shoulder pads way too close to his face. "Captain Caboose, what the hell are you doing." 

"Hugging you", Caboose stated, and wrapped his arms even firmer around the Lieutenant. 

"Yeah, I can tell, _why_ are you hugging me?" His attempt to wiggle out of the hold was beyond doomed, what with Caboose's improbable strength, but Bitters still valiantly gave it his all. 

"Because you looked like you needed it." He couldn't imagine anything being further from the truth. People glaring across large rooms weren't generally the most huggable looking, in his opinion, at least. 

"No I don't, let go!", Bitters protested. Tried to push one of the arms away from him, again, not that it helped. 

"Yes you do. Freckles ran a scan and he agreed." 

"What, you're hugging me because your gun told you to?" 

"No." Bitters could feel Caboose's head shaking, not that he had any chance of seeing it at this angle. "Freckles just agreed, but it was my idea." 

"Well, you're both wrong, then. Hug Katie, she's the one who's crying, she clearly needs a hug more than anyone." 

"Yes, well, you would think that, but actually Smith is already hugging her, and…" Caboose's voice lowered to a conspiratorial whisper, "he's a really great hugger. So, Jensen's in the best hands, so I can focus on you." The last part was yelled, again. Or not yelled, just Caboose's normal speaking voice, which Bitters really didn't need to have so close to his ears, especially considering the fact that he wasn't wearing a helmet right now. 

"Well, stop it, I don't want a hug, I just want to punch things. Or shoot them, or something." 

"No", Caboose declared. "You really need a hug." 

"I'm telling you, I don't. Go away." He wasn't technically supposed to talk to a superior that way, but a superior was also not supposed to be fraternizing this way, so who cared. 

"Yeah… no. We're not done with the hug yet." 

"And when are we done, then?", Bitters huffed.

"You'll know it when it's time." Caboose's tone had a firm 'discussion over' feel to it, and because Bitters genuinely couldn't free himself, he probably really just had to wait it out, no matter how ridiculous he felt about the whole thing. 

As if a hug could help. As if a hug could bring Matthews back to life or make Palomo any less dead. As if a hug from one Captain could make him forget about the fact that his own Captain was dead. He looked over at Smith and Jensen, who both looked at him like they were expecting something to happen. Bitters had no idea what, but he was very sure that it wasn't going to. 

And if Bitters was slowly feeling less like punching things, then that was probably just a coincidence, because he was tired and he'd had a long day, and keeping up anger was a lot of effort that he was too lazy to do for long. Captain Grif would be proud. Except of course he wouldn't be because he was in a drawer somewhere, not doing anything ever again. 

Just like he'd dreamed, probably. Too lazy to breathe, the asshole. 

His nose felt stuffy suddenly, in a way he hadn't before, and he realized that his anger wasn't really there anymore, making way for hurt. Maybe the hug was to blame for that. 

If this was what dealing with your feelings was like, then Bitters would like his impotent rage back, please.

* * *

She should change the settings on the heart monitor. While it looked more dramatic for TV, Emily Grey had learned quite early in her medical career that a heart monitor beeping for every heart beat was one of the most annoying things in the world. Default was to have it beep if any of the vitals went outside the set standard parameters. Useful, and way less annoying. 

And still, here she was, listening to every single one of Sarge's heartbeats. To reassure herself, maybe. Or out of an irrational fear that if she wasn't listening to it, it would stop. Maybe she should set aside some time to psychoanalyze herself at some point. 

Not that the fear of it stopping was all that irrational. It had already stopped, for quite a substantial amount of time, and the fact that it was beating now was mostly a testament to her skills and the amazing capabilities of intensive care medicine. 

Sarge was the only person she'd managed to save. The only person affected by the purge anyone had managed to save. The frantic efforts of all of the other medics of both armies had been fruitless. She probably should feel proud at being the only one successful in their efforts. But she didn't feel proud, or even successful at all. 

Because the truth of the matter was: she wasn't too sure if she had saved him at all. Right now, all it would take would be a power outage for him to die instantly. Or at least for all of his vital functions to cease. Whether or not that would be dying or if that had already happened was a matter for philosophical debate. 

She wasn't feeling particularly philosophical right now.

"How's he doing?" 

Grey looked up from the closely regulated numbers on the heart monitor. She hadn't even heard General Kimball come in. She must be more tired than she'd thought. Probably about as much as Kimball looked. 

"Could be doing better, if I'm honest", she admitted. Kimball stepped closer and took a look at the Colonel. 

"Looks like he's doing much better than a lot of other people, though", Kimball noted. "He was the only one hit by the purge who was saved. You were the only one successful."

Grey wasn't sure if that was a compliment or an accusation. "Success is a strong word for this. While he may technically be alive, I honestly couldn't tell you if he'll ever wake up again." 

She could find out. There were standard diagnostic tests for brain death, and this was most definitely a situation that would warrant doing them, but she hadn't, so far. She wasn't too sure if she wanted to know the answer. 

Kimball let out a sigh. "I was afraid you might say that." Grey wondered why she kept standing awkwardly, until she realized that the second folding chair was still tucked up to the wall. She reached for it and handed it to the General. Kimball took it with a grateful look and unfolded it. The way she plopped down onto the seat spoke volumes to how tired she was. 

For a moment neither of them said anything, just the beeping of the heart monitor to fill the silence. Grey wasn't quite sure what sort of moment they were having, here. She hadn't had many opportunities to talk to Kimball before, and if she was completely honest she had never tried to seek out her company. Most of what she knew about Kimball came from Donald's seemingly endless complaints. 

Despite the universally happy face she usually tried to put on, she hadn't managed to completely let go of her biases toward the New Republic yet. On a case by case basis as she'd gotten to know the lieutenants for instance personally, she'd found a lot of her old anger dissipating, but Kimball was a different story. She'd honestly been surprised when she'd found herself so moved by the General's earlier speech. 

"I shouldn't have called that retreat", Kimball said after a moment. Grey looked up and studied the other woman's face for a moment. Kimball was younger than her, not by much, but still. She didn't look it right now. Grey wondered when the last time was that either of them had looked their age. She certainly didn't feel as young as she should be. 

"We should have kept pushing. We could've taken the radio tower in the confusion. The pirates got hit just as badly as we did, and we could've ended this. Sent the message out, gotten help…" She had a point, of course. Military strategy wasn't really Grey's area of expertise or interest, but even she could tell that ending this conflict once and for all should've taken priority. 

"But if you had ordered to keep up the attack, I don't think many people would've followed you", Grey concluded. After the Purge had been activated there had only been a few units unaffected. Almost everyone had been futilely trying to save their comrades. Kimball's order to retreat hadn't really made much of a difference because people hadn't been fighting anymore at that point, anyway. 

Ordering that retreat had probably also helped Kimball in the long run. Humanized her to the troops who had only just gotten a glimpse at her as a leader instead of an enemy. Pushing the offensive further would probably have yielded better results, but a General ordering you to step over the bodies of your friends without a look back wasn't what the troops of Chorus really needed at this point. 

"True. But it would've been the right choice." 

"That's an easy call to make in hindsight. I probably shouldn't have wasted resources on trying to save Colonel Sarge when I could've taken care of people who were wounded by more conventional means, instead. But I still did this." A psychologist probably would've had an interesting time figuring out why she'd made that choice against her better knowledge. 

Oh who was she kidding, it would barely take to minutes to figure that out.

"You know, what I said when I gave that speech? That you demonize your attackers when fighting a war?" 

"I remember." Grey also distinctly remembered doing the exact same thing about the New Republic. Trying to unlearn that was neither fun nor easy. 

"There was this Fed soldier who got hit by the purge near where I was. I didn't really know her, I'd just tried to mix the squads for the attack so that people would work together better. And she was talking about what she was gonna do once the fighting was over, she kept talking about this farm her family had, and the dog she'd left there, and I realized that the Feds were just as young and just as scared as the New Republic."

Grey wasn't sure what to say to that. She'd made the same observation. With a few exceptions no one who was still fighting was really soldier material. Case in point Doyle. And even herself. She'd never wanted to be a military doctor, or even a surgeon, her plan had been to focus on research. She wondered what Kimball's job had been before the war had started. 

"And now, because I was too soft to keep fighting despite the purge, they're gonna have to go into battle again." 

* * *

When Tucker had told Doctor Grey about the whole prophecy thing and Junior she'd given him a sidelong look, because he had an alien child but couldn't remember more than a few swear words that Church had taught him. 

Which, you know, wasn't great for someone who'd been an ambassador to the Sangheili race and who was trying to be a supportive Dad to a Sangheili son. 

But it wasn't for lack of trying. Back when he'd had that ambassador gig, he'd spent quite a lot of his time taking language lessons with Junior and a Sangheili instructor. It had been one of the most frustrating experiences of his life, and he'd once tried to teach Church and Caboose how to bake a basic chocolate cake using cake mix. 

_Well, to make this sound you just curl your left mandible like this and pop the right one like this._ Junior had tried to explain. 

_I only have one fucking mandible and all it does is go up and down!_ Tucker had protested, which had led to both of his alien instructors to be apologetic and perplexed. As Tucker had later learned there were actually instructors in the UNSC who had come up with decent approximations of the sounds that humans could make and who had developed a useful curriculum for teaching it, but of course no one had bothered to enroll Tucker in one of those classes. 

Of course, he had no idea if it would've gone better if they'd done that instead of plopping two aliens in front of him who didn't really know how human anatomy worked. There was still the issue that Tucker had never learned a foreign language and didn't exactly have a talent for it. The end result of all his lessons had been a lot of frustrations and Tucker only knowing that he would probably never figure out how the language really worked. 

But as he lay awake in the night after the purge, he suddenly remembered those lessons. Because part of the lessons had also been teaching Junior how to speak English, which was a much easier endeavour. One of the vocabulary lessons had been about death, and the translations for really simple words had been super long and left Junior pretty confused about the whole thing. 

Tucker hadn't been sure what the confusion was about and when he'd asked the language instructor, he'd said, " _Sangheili do not view life and death the same way your people do."_ Later that day after some more explanations by the language teacher Junior had suddenly been super clingy and hadn't let Tucker out of his sights. 

So, Tucker knew the aliens that had built the stuff here weren't exactly Sangheili, but Santa looked similar enough. Maybe they also viewed life and death differently, and if that was the case… 

Maybe the Purge wasn't as permanent as they thought.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you guys so much for reading, I'm glad you're enjoying it so far. And especially thanks to a_taller_tale, darthrevaan (Burning_Nightingale), RiaTheDreamer, Hound_Unit, Yin, TheGreatElisaMousy, AriRashkae and Red for your lovely comments. This is honestly the most any of my stories has ever been commented on on AO3, so this makes me very happy. 
> 
> This chapter is still a bit slow, but don't worry, we're getting to the good stuff soon!

The bouquet of flowers that Donut had managed to gather up wasn't exactly the most impressive. But, considering he was in an underground military base with no florist anywhere to be found, he hadn't done half bad. They were mostly red shades, even. Some of them were yellow, which would technically belong to Blue Team, but the bouquet would've looked too small with the few poppies he'd managed to find. 

"Hey Simmons!" Donut knew he didn't quite have his customary cheer in his voice, but he was trying, at least.

The dark circles under Simmons' eyes told the story of a man not having slept all night. Donut was tempted to offer him some eye cream and maybe a face mask while he was at it, but it was probably more polite to just not mention it at all. 

"You know, I have this amazing eye cream that you should try." Courtesy was never as high a priority as proper skin care. 

"Huh?" Simmons sounded like he'd not quite understood the suggestion, and maybe not even recognized that Donut was speaking to him. 

"You know, for those dark circles", Donut explained. Simmons' eyes narrowed. 

"I'm busy", he said, gesturing to a computer terminal that looked pretty unsalvageable to Donut. Not that he was an expert, but he had the impression that most of those wires should end in plugs and not ripped electrical contacts. 

"I'm gonna go visit Sarge, I thought maybe you want to come", Donut said, holding up the bouquet as an indication. 

"I don't think they allow flowers in the ICU", Simmons said. Donut wondered how he knew that.

"Oh they will", he replied with the confidence of someone who'd once convinced Agent Washington to get a pedicure. "So, you wanna come?" 

Something flickered over Simmons' face that made Donut want to pile comfy blankets all over him and make hot chocolate, but he turned back to the computer terminal, hiding his face. 

"I'm busy", he repeated. Donut was sure he wasn't imagining the choked edge to his tone. 

"With what?" 

"Fixing this." 

"Yeah, but… does it need fixing?" Donut couldn't imagine that this computer had much use that couldn't be taken over by literally any other computer on the base. 

"It's broken", Simmons said stubbornly. 

"You know, this isn't healthy, what you're doing." Donut made to cross his arms, but realized he was still holding the flowers. 

"There's many benefits to doing work, there's psychological research on it", Simmons protested. 

"Burying your feeling in work isn't going to make them go away", Donut argued. 

"Shut up." 

"Simmons, I'm just trying to say, I'm here for you. You know, we should stick together, you and I are the only…" 

"Don't!" Simmons interrupted. He wasn't looking at Donut, but the curl of his robotic arm's fist said enough. 

It probably wasn't personal, so Donut did his best not to take it that way. It still stung. 

"I'll tell Sarge you said 'hi'", Donut said, and turned away.  It wasn't that he didn't get what Simmons was doing, or why. He just really wished it were different. Donut really would've liked having a teammate to talk to. 

"Donut", Simmons called out, when he was almost out of earshot. He paused, looking back over his shoulder. "Sorry." 

Simmons wasn't looking at him, still staring into the busted computer. It didn't sound like the most heartfelt apology, but it was something.

* * *

It took approximately 3 minutes between Tucker leaving the base and getting too annoyed to keep ignoring his pursuer. 

"Caboose, A) why the hell are you following me? B) cut it out with the 'sneaking sneaking sneaking sneaking' already." He turned around and looked at his teammate who was carrying a somewhat dried up tree branch that was about as thick as Tucker’s pinky. As hiding-places went, it left a lot to be desired. 

"Oh Tucker! Fancy seeing you here. What a coincidence, who could've seen this coming. Freckles, did you see this coming?", Caboose started rambling as he was spotted. He kept holding up the tree branch as if that would make the conversation more casual. 

"Yes", Freckles droned. 

"Well that's just… I was just, you know, taking Freckles for a walk, you know how it is…"

"Uh huh."

"Yes, just, you know, seeing the sight, getting some fresh air…" 

"You're breathing through a helmet." 

"Ah, yes, but more freshly." Caboose started waving his hands toward his face as if he could fan fresh air at himself through the visor.

"Seriously, just cut it out. Why are you following me?" 

"Well, why would you think that? Maybe _you_ are following _me_! Did you ever think about that?" 

"No, because you're behind me." 

"Oh… well, that's… yeah that's… yeah I guess, that's sort of… where I am." Tucker rolled his head in the universal motion of rolling one's eyes while wearing a helmet. Caboose had always been immune to that gesture.

"So, why are you following me? Go back to base."

"Well, you looked very determined and I wanted to spy on… I mean find out where you're going. So…" Caboose struck what he probably thought was a casual pose, clasping his hands together behind his back, and swaying a little from foot to foot. It looked pretty uncomfortable, considering Freckles was strapped to his back and was in the way of his shoulders twisting backwards. 

"Where you going?" Caboose said it so casually as if it was the start of a completely new conversation. Tucker was not impressed with his teammate's espionage skills. 

"I just wanna check on something. Go back to base and do whatever it is you do. Annoy someone else", Tucker instructed tersely. 

"Well… I kind of… don't want to? We can check together, it'll take twice as long! I mean… no…" Caboose held up his fingers and started counting something off. 

"Twice as long sounds about right, Caboose. Seriously, I don't need your help." While Tucker wasn't completely sure that going alone was the best idea he'd ever had, he was completely convinced that he was right. If he did need help, it definitely wasn't Caboose's.

"But I don't want to go back, everyone's sad and I want to help, but they won't let me, and I think it's better if I go with you", Caboose declared. "You won't notice I'm here, I'll be very very quiet, I promise." 

Tucker had serious doubts about that promise. Quiet and Caboose didn't really go together in many sentences other than _Caboose, be quiet_ , which was a pretty futile thing to say. Still, there was something about Caboose's posture that made him pause. He really wanted to send him away. There were enough issues without dealing with Caboose all day. But he understood Caboose's reluctance to stay at the base. The atmosphere was gloomy and oppressive and Tucker had felt better almost immediately after stepping out of the cave. And then he'd felt guilty about feeling better, but that was a whole other pandora's box to unpack. 

"Fine", he sighed, against his better judgment. "Just don't get in my way." 

"Yes!", Caboose said with a fist pump. "This'll be great, I'm super fun on road trips, you know."

Caboose's voice echoing from the rock faces around them was enough to make Tucker regret agreeing to this. But seeing the spring in his teammate's step as they went further and the way his hunched over posture straightened up, stopped Tucker from going back on his word.

* * *

The Temple of Armament was the closest to the New Republic base, so that's where Tucker took Caboose. He wasn't sure if what he wanted to do was something that could be done from there, what with all the temples having their own specific theme, but if it wasn't, at least it was where he could ask Santa about where to go properly. 

He only hoped that if it turned out to be possible and he needed to go somewhere it wasn't the Temple of the Purge that they'd crashed a space ship into two days ago. 

"Welcome, Lavernius Tucker", Santa's voice boomed after Tucker activated the glowing seal. 

"Oh, Santa! Tucker, why didn't you tell me, I would've brought cookies. It's all Tucker's fault. Stupid Tucker." 

"Dude, he's a hologram, he can't eat cookies", Tucker said with an eyeroll.

"Well, that's not very open-minded, Tucker", Caboose said, folding his arms. 

"Dude that's got nothing to do with being open-minded, it's just physics", Tucker argued. Not that he hadn't forgotten about the hologram thing when dealing with Epsilon multiple times. The text chat on his HUD pinged with a new message from Caboose. The cookie emoji of all things. 

"Dude, that's not the point", Tucker groaned. "Anyway, Santa…" 

"Yes?" the massive red alien AI asked.

"You know, it's still weird to call you that… anyway, the aliens, you know like, today's aliens don't really think of life and death the same way humans do. Like, not as permanent or something. Where your aliens the same way? You know, the ones that built all this stuff here?" 

"It is difficult for me to answer that question. I have only a limited knowledge of human culture, so I cannot easily compare." 

"Oh, right, well. The Sangheili, you know aliens today, at least the big ones, they don't really think death is just like, bam you're gone now, but kind of… less final, I guess?" Not that Tucker had really completely understood what Junior had been trying to tell him about that. "So, is that the same with your aliens?" 

"From my perspective, you are the aliens", Santa reminded him. 

"Well, just Tucker, because he's green", Caboose supplied. 

"The fuck? Dude, I'm not green, I'm aqua!", Tucker protested. "Also, not all aliens are green. Who's close minded now?" 

"But I believe from that description that my creators had similar beliefs to the Sangheili."

"Great, so, you think you can undo this purge thing maybe? With some alien magic? Or technology or something?" 

"Oh that's what we're here for? That's a great idea, Tucker, I didn't think you had it in you." 

"Great, thanks for the vote of confidence, Caboose." 

"There… is a way to counteract the purge's effects, yes", Santa said. Tucker wasn't sure if he'd ever heard him hesitate before, but he didn't really care, because he was too busy being excited at the statement.

"There is? Awesome, let's do it." 

"It's not exactly aimed at undoing the purge. My creators made the mechanism to be able to counteract a planet level extinction event, in case an unforeseen tragedy happened to them." 

"But if they had that, then why aren't they still here?", Caboose asked. Which was a surprisingly good question, but not exactly something that Tucker cared about at the moment. 

"The method is aimed to counteract a big, sudden, event. That was not what happened. The end of my creator's reign over this planet was something that spanned many decades and ended with my creators leaving rather than dying." 

"Okay, cool history lesson and stuff, but how do we get our people back?" 

"I do not think it would be wise to do this carelessly. The method I am speaking of was not meant to work on organisms such as yourself. It has been created specifically for my creators. I do not know the consequences attempting to use it on humans may have", Santa cautioned. 

"Well, can you do it or can't you? Do we have to go somewhere and use the sword on some other temple or something?" 

"No, you do not. The method was devised in a way that it could be accessed from all temples, so that whoever needed to activate it would be able to reach the closest temple in a timely manner. Still, I do believe more deliberation is necessary to…" 

"Oh come on. What's the worst that could happen?" 

 


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Once again, thank you so much to everyone reading this and an extra big thank you to TheGreatElisaMousy, a_taller_tale, AriRashkae, Yin, RiaTheDreamer, darthrevaan (Burning_Nightingale) and Red for your lovely comments! 
> 
> The idea for this first scene was actually what spurred the idea for this whole story so I hope you'll enjoy!

It wasn't something that was easy to explain to people in polite conversations, but there was something soothing about being in a morgue, Doctor Grey had always thought. 

The morgue in the New Republic base was well equipped and well maintained. Better than some of their other facilities. It was probably better not to think too hard about why that might be. That would quickly turn depressing. 

Still, there was something freeing about being there, faced with the stark realization that when it all came down to it, there was nothing really different about people. And while she wouldn't say she was completely fine with the idea that everyone, including herself, would die one day, being faced with the reality of it made it seem a little less daunting. She knew what dead bodies looked like, how they changed the longer they were dead, and while those things weren't necessarily pleasant, there was a strange comfort to be drawn from it. 

Plus, the quiet and calm permeating the morgue was a welcome break from the fast paced stress of emergency medicine she was usually a part of. 

But on the rare occasions she had time to deal with autopsies and being in morgues, she usually didn't know the people she was working on very well. Working on someone she considered a friend was a strange feeling, and as she was washing her hands after the autopsy, she was glad it was over. 

Usually the detachment came easily to her. Compartmentalize that what you're working on isn't just a collection of organs, but a real person who just a few days ago was walking and talking and breathing. But this time, she'd kept being reminded of who exactly she was doing an autopsy on. With all the organs sewn in a little bit crookedly and the frankly baffling fact that he had two pancreases, it was hard not to. The fact that Sarge's operation had actually saved his life and not finished him off was close to a miracle really. Part of why, before this whole thing had happened, Grey had been half convinced that the simulation troopers were some sort of unkillable person/cockroach hybrid. 

Well, now she knew that they were just as mortal as the rest of them. She would've preferred never finding out. 

The autopsy itself hadn't yielded much in the way of helpful results, either. She'd been hoping to figure out how the Purge affected the victims, see if she could come up with a way to defend against it, or at least figure out if there was anything she could do to help Sarge wake up again. 

But there was nothing that had been really helpful. From the autopsy it looked like Grif was completely healthy, apart from the usual effects of smoking, adiposity and home-made organ transplants. There hadn't been any cause of death that she could determine. By all rights, he should be up and about, or at least snoring and sleeping, because there wasn't actually anything particularly wrong with him. Except, of course, for being dead. 

It seemed like his vital functions had just spontaneously ceased from one moment to the next, which was consistent with her observations of the other victims, but unfortunately not particularly helpful for her remaining patient. 

Maybe Grif didn't want to help her remaining patient. 

Maybe the next autopsy would be more forthcoming. Though her hopes weren't particularly high. It might even be better that way. Understanding what the Purge did would not only be the key to how to counteract it, it could also be the key to recreating something similar. And that wasn't something Grey wanted to have any part in. 

The rushing of the water was the only noise in the morgue as Grey cleaned off her tools. Standards for sterile equipment were slightly less stringent for dead people than they were for living people. 

There was a rustling noise as Grey turned off the tab. She turned to look around to see what had made that noise, but then mentally chastised herself when she saw no one there. That was the issue with the calm of the morgue. It was soothing, but it also made you hyper vigilant. Any noise, no matter how little could put you on edge, and being on edge could trick your mind into hearing noises that it never would've noticed otherwise. 

She turned back around and went about drying her instruments. It wouldn't do to have a paranoid fit, especially not when she still had several autopsies to perform this afternoon. Maybe she should get one of the medics to assist her, to dispel the odd feeling that had crept up on her. But the medics had enough things to do taking care of living patients. And where it had been hard on her to work on people she knew, someone with no experience at autopsies would be even more freaked out. 

There was another rustling noise. 

She was tempted to turn around, but refrained from doing so. _Emily, get yourself together._ Giving in to the impulse of checking would just be the start of being paranoid all afternoon. _Enjoy the serenity of the place, don't think of horror movies._

Oh, well that wasn't a smart thing to think, because of course, now she was thinking of horror movies, and the next rustling noise seemed even louder than the previous one. 

"What the fuck?" a voice said behind her. Ah, that explained all the noises. Someone must've come in while she hadn't been paying attention. 

"This is a…" _restricted work space_ , she wanted to say, but the words stuck in her throat when she saw who had asked. 

She screamed before she had even entirely processed what she was seeing. 

Stumbling back, she collided with the tray table that held the tools she had already finished drying. They fell to the floor with a loud clatter. 

For a moment there was no noise in the room, just her staring at what could only be a hallucination.

Of course she'd been sleep deprived, but that had happened before, and she'd never had hallucinations. Maybe there was something strange in the water in the base? There was a radioactive lake hidden in the caves, maybe there were hallucinogenic substances around as well. 

The door burst open. "Doctor Grey, are you okay? I heard a scream. What's going…" Agent Washington came into view, gun at the ready. "…on?", he finished, staring at the exact same spot Emily was staring at as well. 

"Holy shit, put the gun down, dude!", Dexter Grif shouted, jumping off the slab as if to hide behind it. The sheet that had been covering his body slid down, revealing everything, including the incisions Doctor Grey had just made for the autopsy. 

"…Grif?" Agent Washington asked, not pointing his rifle anymore, but it looked more like he forgot to aim it, rather than making a conscious decision. 

"Why am I naked?", Grif asked, grabbing the sheet from the slab to cover himself with. 

"How is… what?", Wash asked, and Grey was inclined to agree with him. But on the plus side…

"So you see this, too? That's reassuring", she declared. 

"…Reassuring?", Wash repeated. 

"Well, I thought it might be a hallucination, but both of us hallucinating the same thing is highly unlikely."

"What the fuck is going on? Where am I? What the fuck are you talking about? And why am I naked?!", Grif yelled. 

"Because it's  standard operating procedure to completely disrobe a dead body for proper examination", Grey answered. 

"Dead body? What the fuck?", Grif reiterated. 

"Yeah, how is this…?", Wash asked, emoting his shock and confusion quite aptly through the bobbing of his helmet. 

"I honestly have no idea", Grey announced cheerfully, as she picked up her scanner. "But this is absolutely fascinating!" 

"Are you not gonna explain what's going on?", Grif demanded as she went over to him and started scanning him. 

"Is this… I mean, he really _was_ dead, right?" 

"Oh absolutely", Grey declared. "Even if he somehow hadn't been, I just performed an autopsy on him, and it's very rare for people to stand up after one of those." 

"Autopsy?", Grif shrieked. "What the fuck are you talking about?" He looked around, staring at all the slabs with sheets covering bodies. "Is this the morgue?" 

"It is, actually", Grey confirmed. "And you should not be moving around. I mean, not that I disapprove, it's just a tiny bit impossible." 

"Did I fall asleep and someone carried me here? Because that's not funny!" 

"No, you were most definitely dead, Captain Grif. See those bruises on your backside? That's postmortem lividity. That's one of the certain signs of death. I mean, it's very surprising that you're able to move around at all, because you were in rigor mortis when I last examined you." 

" _That's_ the surprising part?", Wash asked, sounding a bit like he was about to throw up. 

"You're fucking with me, right? I mean, this is a really elaborate prank, right?", Grif asked, as he looked at the large bruising on his backside. 

"Afraid not. Welcome back to the land of the living", Grey said with a smile. Her scanner gave a little vibration to let her know the scan was finished. And its results were absolutely fascinating. She'd seen many strange things over her medical career, but this definitely took the cake. There was a heart beat and blood flow again when there hadn't been any just a short while ago. And there shouldn't be, because in order to weigh the organs she'd removed all of them. But it looked like the connections were regenerating, something that should, by all means be impossible. 

"How… what the hell is going on?", Grif asked. 

"I don't know yet. But I intend to find out", Grey declared. From the look on Grif's face, he didn't find that statement to be too reassuring.

* * *

Simmons couldn't remember the last time he was this productive. He was always a hard worker, but he honestly couldn't remember if he'd ever thrown himself into his work quite as enthusiastically as this time. 

But anything was better than spending time alone with his thoughts. He'd put upgrades into several of the things he'd worked on that weren't necessary, just that he could spend more time with his hands busy and his thoughts occupied. 

It helped. To a degree. 

He'd been so desperate to keep up distraction that he had barely slept the last two nights, and he wasn't sure how long he could keep this up. At some point it would probably all come crashing down and he wasn't ready for it. He would probably never be ready for it, so he did his best to push all thoughts away. 

The computer terminal he was working on had looked like a hopeless case when he'd gotten there, but he'd put enough determination into it that now it was turning on again. Which was both good, because it was a success, and bad, because he needed to find a new distraction, now. 

Grif would probably give him an earful about working too hard, and just needing to get the stick out of his ass and relax. 

Grif was never going to do that again. 

Sarge would probably commend Simmons on his work ethic and reprimand Grif for his laziness. 

Sarge was in a coma. He might never wake up again, either. None of the medics seemed particularly hopeful that he would. 

Simmons did his best to push these thoughts aside as he pushed himself up from the floor that he'd been sitting on. He took out the tablet he had with him and checked his to do list for the next piece of equipment that needed fixing. 

_"But does it really need fixing?",_ Donut had asked. If Simmons were completely honest with himself, he'd admit that it didn't. But he couldn't be honest with himself right now. But he did recognize that he'd been a dick to Donut. He probably should do something to make it up to him, but even that seemed too daunting.

It wasn't far from here and he was grateful for it. Long walks along the gloomy tunnels weren't exactly conducive to his ‘avoidance of all emotions’ strategy. The tunnels had not appeared all that gloomy before they'd left for Armonia, but now that they were back and everyone was mourning someone, it seemed like there was a cloud of miasma just lingering in the stuffy hallways. 

Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and Acceptance. Those were supposed to be the fives stages of grief, and he'd seen enough outbursts from different people around the base that belonged to each of the first four. But it wasn't really obligatory to go through all five, right? He could just coast by on denial long enough to arrive at acceptance, right? 

Except acceptance… just the thought made his chest twinge uncomfortably. 

Denial for the rest of his life it was, then. It was a good strategy, it had served him well in other areas. 

He arrived at the next computer terminal that was just as broken as the last one and avoided eye contact with everyone there. There was a young soldier hiding in one of the corners of the room crying. Simmons turned up the radio in his helmet that he'd set to a channel that only broadcast static so he didn't have to listen to it. 

He hadn't really cried since it had happened. That would've interfered with his winning strategy of denial, but hearing other people do it didn't make that easier. He took out his tools, pried open the side panel of the computer terminal and got to work. 

Out of the corner of his eye he noticed the other soldier get up and leave, and he turned down the static again. 

The room was empty now, and that wasn't all that conducive either. 

_Focus on the parts, don't focus on how you never told Grif how you…_ No, parts it was. The terminal was probably a lost cause, but that just made the challenge bigger. 

"-Tain Simmons, Captain Simmons to the war room, please." The transmission cut through the static, and Simmons was tempted to ignore it. There wasn't really any strategy that he was particularly interested in hearing. According to Bitters they were all doomed, anyway. Simmons wasn't sure he disagreed with that assessment at all. 

"Captain Simmons, do you read?" How Doctor Grey could sound so cheerful at a time like this was anyone's guess. Simmons really wasn't a fan. 

"Yes, I'm here. I'm kind of busy right now, do you really need me?" 

"Oh, I think you're gonna want to know about this", she said. From the tone of her voice he could imagine a huge grin on her face. Her disposition had never really bothered him before, now it was the most obnoxious sound he'd ever heard. 

But, she was still an authority figure, and as much as he wanted to tell her to stuff it, there were certain things he would never be rid of, no matter how jaded he might become. 

"Fine", he sighed. "I'm on my way." 

He packed up his tools, and checked off this particular terminal from his to do list. It was a lost cause, anyway. 

There was something different about the energy in the hallways when he walked toward the war room, but he didn't pay too much attention. _Different energy just means more work_ , a voice that sounded a lot like Grif commented in his head.

He wondered what it was about, even if he didn't want to care. At some point Kimball was going to order another raid on the radio tower to finally get their message out. There might also be a memorial for those lost soon, and if organizing that was what this was about then Simmons might just walk straight back out again. 

A memorial really was the last place he wanted to be, because then he wouldn't be able to avoid the realization that Grif was really… anyway, he didn't really want to be forced into something like that in public. But of course he would have to go. It was only proper to, and he knew that if he didn't, he wouldn't be able to live with himself. 

As he neared the meeting room, he saw a flash of pink, and he wished he could just avoid him, but Donut had already spotted him.

"Oh hey Simmons! They called you, too? Do you have any idea what it's about?" 

"No", Simmons grumbled. 

"Hm, maybe it's about finally getting into the radio tower. I suggested we find a way to infiltrate it from the rear", Donut musted. 

"Sure you did." 

"Or maybe the Freelancers came up with a better plan", Donut continued. "I hear Carolina and Epsilon have been working hard on strategy." 

"Sure they have", Simmons said noncommittally. He knew that while many members of both armies blamed the Freelancers for the Purge, it wasn't really their fault. Felix had activated it, and they had actually managed to stop it and kill both of the mercs. They'd just been too late. 

He knew that it wasn't fair to blame them. Didn't really stop him from doing it, anyway.

"Oh and Doctor Grey is there apparently. Maybe she has some news about Sarge", Donut kept on speculating. Simmons wasn't sure if he wanted Donut to be right on that one. Because on the one hand he felt lost without his superior officer's guidance, but on the other he really didn't want to hear what Sarge would have to say about Grif's… it was just bound to be something terrible, and maybe it would be supposed to be humorous, but Simmons wasn't sure if he could handle hearing any of that. 

"Oh, there we are!", Donut announced, as if that was a surprise. It took Simmons a moment to remember that Donut had barely spent any time here before, because he'd been with the Feds when they'd gotten into this whole mess.

The door to the meeting room slid open as they approached, and all of Simmons' thoughts stopped at the sight he was presented with. 

"Holy shit!", Donut announced as he entered. Simmons could only step forward in a daze. He knew he wanted to say something, but his mouth was just moving without making any sounds. There wasn't really anything to say that would encapsulate what was going through his head in this moment, anyway. 

Grif was standing there. Standing there, as if nothing had happened. Well not exactly like that, he looked uncomfortable in the surgical scrubs he was wearing, but he was standing. Eyes open and looking at things. His expression lit up as he spotted Simmons, but then he seemed to reign himself in a bit, again. He raised his arm in a casual wave. 

"Hey Simmons, 'sup?" 

They were the sweetest words Simmons had ever heard.   

It seemed to take barely a few steps until Simmons had reached him, and then he was wrapping his arms around Grif without any care in the world. His armor was in the way, but he could tell even through the gloves that this was real, he wasn't dreaming and it was the best thing that had ever happened to him. 

"Hey, uh…", Grif started. Simmons didn't have a reply for him, just had to give an extra squeeze. The biocomm on his HUD told him that Grif was warm, had a regular heartbeat and was just all around healthy. 

He hadn't really cried before, but now the floodgates opened. Grif was here, he was real, and all the terrible things that had haunted Simmons' every step for the last two days weren't actually happening. He didn't have to go to a funeral, he didn't have to write a letter to Kai, and he didn't have to figure out how he was ever going to live the rest of his life without this idiot. He managed to turn his helmet's external speakers off, so no one would hear him sobbing, but the shaking of his shoulders was probably giving him away.

"Dude, that's too tight", Grif choked out. "You're wearing power armor and I'm not." 

Oh, right. Simmons let up a little, but not before he snuck in one last squeeze. 

"Holy shit it really worked!" 

Simmons looked up to see Tucker coming into the room. He hadn't really paid attention to the other people in the room, and he turned a bit to see who else was there. He didn't let go of Grif's shoulder's though. Just in case. 

Wash was there, his helmeted face unreadable, and Donut had his hands clasped together under his chin. Simmons didn't need to see his face to know what expression he was wearing. Carolina, on the other side of the room, had her helmet tucked under her arm and looked at Grif cautiously. Kimball looked torn between confusion and delight. Doctor Grey had this very interested look on her face that was a little unsettling and kept fiddling with the scanner she was holding. 

Tucker had just come in, Caboose hot on his heels. Tucker had his hand up like he'd just fist pumped, and Caboose made a beeline for Grif. 

"Gruff!", he yelled, and then wrapped his arms around Grif from the other side. Simmons had to suppress the urge to hiss _Stay away from him, he's mine._

"And what is it that 'worked' Captain Tucker?", Kimball asked in that stern tone of hers. 

"Well that!", Tucker said, pointing towards Grif. "He's not the only one, right? Are the others okay, too?" 

"Oh yes. Let me tell you, the morgue has never been that lively", Doctor Grey said cheerfully.

"You seem to know something about this, Tucker", Carolina prompted.

"Well I went to Santa and asked him to undo the purge thing, so he did", Tucker explained in a triumphant tone. Grif meanwhile was hitting Caboose's shoulder plate, probably to make him let go.

"What, just like that? You just asked him to undo it, and now everything is fine?", Epsilon projected at Carolina's shoulder and crossed his arms skeptically. 

"Yeah, the aliens had this thing against catastrophes so we used that", Tucker said. 

"But Santa said there might be consequences", Caboose threw in, finally stepping away from hugging Grif. Grif took a huge breath and coughed a little. Simmons still didn’t let go of his shoulders. 

"What kind of consequences?", Kimball asked with an alarmed tone to her voice. 

"He didn't say", Caboose said. "Because he didn't know", he added in a conspiratorial whisper that wasn't actually any quieter than his normal speaking voice. 

"Who cares. Look right there, that's the consequence!", Tucker declared, pointing toward Grif. It occurred to Simmons that he should probably let go of his teammate, but an irrational impulse kept him right where he was. As long as he was touching him, he knew he was real. What if he stopped and it all turned out to be just a dream? 

"Okay, that's a good point", Kimball conceded. "But you had no idea what was going to happen. You should've told us in advance, let us weigh the options before doing anything rash." 

"Well, yeah, but now I already didn't do that, so….", Tucker said with a shrug. He didn't seem terribly sorry. Simmons was fine with that. He didn't want Tucker to be sorry about this, either. In fact he felt more like baking a multitiered cream cake for Tucker for this achievement. Not that he knew how.

"Well, we don't know exactly what this did, but I think I'm going to talk to Santa about it", Doctor Grey said. "It seems to be a pretty powerful method of healing people. Not only did it reanimate all the people hit by the purge, it also fixed several of their injuries." She pointed her scanner at Grif again.

"Looks like it's making the repairs by adding alien DNA to the places that are damaged. Fascinating. I've never seen anything like this!"

"Are we sure that this is safe?", Wash asked. "I mean… we don't know anything about what side effects this might have. Are the people who were resurrected really safe to be around?" 

"What's that supposed to mean?", Grif asked in an offended tone. 

"Well, you were dead for two days because of strange alien technology, and now you were resurrected by even more alien technology. That could have unforeseen consequences", he cautioned. 

"Oh, yeah", Donut said. "Grif, do you feel like eating anyone's brains?" 

"What." 

"Well we don't know much about alien zombies, now do we?", Donut said. "Or maybe you're a vampire now? Do you crave the taste of blood?" The pink soldier looked way too excited about that possibility.

"I crave the taste of Oreos", Grif deadpanned. 

"Or maybe you just crave specific blood. Like in Twilight. You want to be a good vegetarian vampire, but Simmons' blood just smells too sweet… You should probably keep your helmet on, just in case." 

"Donut, this is not Twilight", Simmons admonished. 

"Yeah, if I go outside and start to sparkle, please just shoot me", Grif groaned. Simmons couldn't help but tighten his grip on Grif at that. 

"Oh I'm sure Sparkles would look stunning with your complexion", Donut stated, and Grif rolled his eyes. 

"Anyway, no, I don't crave blood or brains, and I feel perfectly normal except for the fact that I don't have shoes. So can I finally go and put on some clothes?" 

"Fine. But I urge everyone to keep an eye on the people who were affected to make sure no one starts acting strange", Kimball instructed. 

"Oh, I think Simmons volunteers", Caboose said helpfully.

Well, he wasn't wrong.

 


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Once again, a very big Thank You to TheGreatElisaMousy, a_taller_tale, WreckItRhino, Aenlu, Yin, darthrevaan (Burning_Nightingale) and RiaTheDreamer for your comments! It makes me so happy to see you all in my inbox, you're really making this fic a whole lot more fun for me! 
> 
> And now for a hint of those consequences several of you have been wondering about!

On the day Grif had been resurrected after having been dead for two days, the unthinkable happened.

No, not the raising from the dead thing. That wasn't unthinkable. That was totally and utterly thinkable. Just look at all the zombie movies. Or Jesus. Or Church. People had been thinking about resurrecting the dead for ages. 

The real unthinkable thing was something else. 

He couldn't sleep. 

Oh yes. Dexter Grif, the man who had once slept through an entire alien invasion and the ensuing battle afterwards when he hadn't even been particularly tired, couldn't sleep. And it wasn't for lack of being tired, either. He was beat. 

His day had consisted of waking up in the morgue butt naked and having a rifle pointed at him, and had only gotten marginally less stressful from there. It had contained about a billion different medical exams from Doctor Grey, a whole bunch of people whose names he barely even knew trying to talk to him and Simmons not letting him get more than two feet away from him, as if he'd vanish right before his very eyes if not kept under close observation at all times. 

It was late, and he was tired and here he was, wide awake, staring at the ceiling. 

Because as much as he tried to be nonchalant about it, this was a big deal. 

He didn't remember dying. Maybe that was what made it so weird. He remembered being at the communications tower with Simmons, commenting on other people’s fighting while not doing much himself (his specialty), and then he remembered waking up in the morgue. Like someone had cut a movie and took out the most important scenes. 

If not for the way Simmons had sobbed in his shoulder, he would've been inclined to believe that this was all an elaborate prank that someone was trying to pull on him. 

But apparently he'd actually died. No warning, no famous last words, just gone from one moment to the next. Not that that was entirely unexpected. He'd been an active soldier for many years, the risk had always been there. But he hadn't really expected that if he ever died suddenly, he'd be able to reflect on it later. 

He really would've preferred not reflecting on it right now, though. He could do that all day tomorrow, now he could just close his eyes and let the sweet embrace of sleep take him. 

Except…

 _You can sleep when you're dead, Private._ He'd heard that line so often in his life, he couldn't even count. Sarge had always loved saying that to him. But now he had died, and if nothing else, he now knew that being dead and sleeping felt nothing alike. 

And now there was this irrational fear in him that if he went to sleep now, he might actually go back to being dead. He knew that wasn't likely, Doctor Grey had run so many tests on him that proved he was alive and healthy that he needn't worry, but he just couldn't shake the idea. He was fine. The weird bruising had gone away, and he felt perfectly fine. 

Or did he really? 

 _Are we the result of some cosmic coincidence, or is there really a god, watching everything?_ After that one time he'd learned not to share too many philosophical musings with anyone, but now it was haunting him. He hadn't really believed there was a god, but the idea of a live after death… well it had seemed nice, at least. 

But it looked like that wasn't really true. He'd been dead for two days and there had been… nothing. No heaven, no hell, no Nirvana, no reincarnation… not even blackness or something, just… nothing. Time hadn't passed for him, but it had passed on the outside. 

Or maybe something existed after death, and he just didn't know because _he_ hadn't actually been dead. Maybe the real Dexter Grif had died, and now he was just an alien fake who was trying to take up the role. That would also explain his uncharacteristic lack of sleep. 

Whatever the truth was, one thing was for certain, though. Lying here staring at the ceiling wasn't working out for him. He finally flipped back the covers and decided to get up. The pajamas he was wearing weren't quite the right size, but they hadn't had time to pack all of their belongings when they'd left Armonia. Two days ago. It felt like it was the same day. 

If sleep was how you defined who Dexter Grif was, then eating was the second thing that would occur to you. So he decided to make his way to the mess hall, see if there were any leftovers from the day to eat and drink some warm drink that might make him more sleepy. 

There weren't many people around when he made his way down to the mess hall, but they all stared at him without fail. This was not exactly new, with the Blood Gulch crew's reputation around these parts he was often stared at, but it usually didn't bother him as much. There was an undercurrent of caution with everyone, as if he would start showing his true colors as an alien zombie soon. Not that he could be completely sure that he wasn't going to be one. 

The mess hall was almost completely empty, but there was one table that was occupied. Matthews and Palomo were sitting there, along with a Fed girl that Grif had met in the morgue when she'd woken up there. He'd been slightly faster than the others, but once everyone had woken up, it had been chaos. 

"Oh, Captain Grif! Over here!" Matthews jumped up when he saw him and waved, as if Grif was going to have trouble finding them, when they were the only people in the entire mess hall. He rolled his eyes, and went to get himself a tea. Once he had his tea, he went to sit down with the others, too. 

"Couldn't sleep, either, sir?", Palomo asked when he sat down. 

"No, I'm a high functioning sleep walker", Grif said. 

"Really?" Matthews looked at him in awe. "That's so cool. Like you're asleep and you can still talk to us? That's amazing." Grif responded with an unimpressed stare. "Oh, was that… that was sarcasm, right?" 

"Yeah, good job figuring that out Matthews." 

"So, uh, why can't you sleep, sir?", Palomo asked. 

"Facing the existential questions of what it means that I was dead for two days and am now alive again, mostly, how about you, Palomo?" 

"Oh… yeah that's… pretty much the same actually, sir", Palomo admitted. 

"Exactly, and I didn't even start unpacking the horror at Doctor Grey actually performing an autopsy on me, so can we talk about something else and all drink our tea, instead?" 

"Yeah, that's… that's probably a good idea." 

 

* * *

 

Digging himself out of the rubble had been no easy endeavor. Locus' armor was a mess, his radio didn't work and it was probably a blessing that his biocomm was out of commission as well. At least he didn't have to know how many bones he had actually broken. 

But he was still alive. Which was more than could be said for his partner, and if the purge activation had actually been successful, then it was more then could be said for the inhabitants of the planet, as well. Because of his broken radio he hadn't been able to make any calls to their men, but he wasn't too sure if any of them were still left to hear it at all. 

He'd managed to make his way to a small abandoned settlement that had been nearby. There hadn't been much left in the way of supplies, but he'd managed to perform some basic first aid on himself, and there had been some old cans of soup. Eating it cold hadn't been ideal, but there hadn't been any power, so he hadn't been able to warm it. 

The biggest priority was probably sorting out communication and then transportation. He needed to confirm with Control that he was still alive and find out if there was anyone else left on the planet. If so he'd need to figure out a strategy for how to get rid of the settlers. Otherwise he would need an extraction plan. 

Figuring out a way to get rid of any remaining settlers wouldn't be easy. They'd lost pretty much all of their biggest tactical advantages, many of their men had not made it out of Armonia, and with the loss of the Tartarus most of the rest of their men were out of the picture as well. The loss of Sharkface was especially regrettable. The unhinged mercenary had been a good fighter, but he'd fallen short of his goal of taking out Carolina. 

And of course there was the matter of Felix. 

Locus wasn't completely sure how he felt about that. 

They'd been working together for so long that every time he thought of Felix's death it caught him by surprise again. All of his plans naturally included Felix in some way, if only planning a contingency in case his partner messed something up. Now, planning without both his interference and his support was… odd. 

It wasn't that he missed him. 

Probably. 

But the fact of the matter was that ever since the great war he hadn't been truly alone in any of his endeavors. Felix had always been there, for better or for worse (usually for worse), but the fact that they'd worked well together was undeniable. If not for the interference of the Freelancers and the simulation troopers they would've long been done with this planet. 

There was an odd freeing feeling about it, though, that he couldn't quite explain. The loss of Felix's support also meant he didn't have to deal with any of his moods or manipulations anymore. 

Still, first was trying to get himself back into a semblance of fighting shape and establishing a line of communication. 

_Knock knock knock._

Locus looked up in alarm. He'd been convinced that the settlement had been abandoned. He'd done a thorough check of he perimeter, or at least as thorough as he could make it while seriously incapacitated. 

Looked like it hadn't been enough. 

_Knock knock knock._

This was clearly not just someone knocking randomly. The house he was in had been deliberately targeted, so whoever it was must've known he was here. His active camouflage unit was out of commission and while he wasn't running any equipment that would send out signals, a basic bio scan of the area was probably enough to find him, because he hadn't had the means to take any measures against that. 

"Open up, I know you're in there!" 

The voice was muffled through the door, but it still sounded familiar. Hauntingly familiar. But it couldn't actually be…? No, he'd seen Agent Washington's knife going into Felix's skull. There had been no doubt about the aim being true, and the force had most definitely been sufficient. At that angle the knife would've easily penetrated the brain stem, and even if not, the subsequent bleeding would've caused enough swelling for the brain to be squeezed too tight by the limits of the skull. There was no way Felix could've survived that. 

Not to mention the subsequent crash of a spaceship right onto the temple, that would've buried him under tons of concrete and metal. 

Still, Locus had to know. He grabbed his rifle, made sure there was sufficient ammunition inside and approached the door cautiously. Before he could make it there, though, it was knocked off its hinges. 

Behind it stood Felix, his armor just as damaged as Locus', but the helmet was still mostly intact. Except for the visor over the left eye where Agent Washington's knife had penetrated. The knife was still in exactly the place it had landed, and the hole left in the visor was big enough to show that a) this was undoubtedly Felix's face and b) there was no way he should've been able to survive that injury. 

Felix paid no attention to how ghoulish he looked with that knife sticking out and strolled right into the room as if he owned the place. 

"Miss me, partner?" 

 


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Have you guys seen the [lovely](http://connorharrison.tumblr.com/post/157465329547/entry-1-for-my-rvb-big-bang-contribution-based) [art](http://connorharrison.tumblr.com/post/158617401067/another-update-for-incremental-annihilation-by) that my Big Bang partner @connorharrison has been posting? Because if not go click, there's a new one for chapter 5 up!
> 
> Also as always, a big thank you to not only my artist, but also to TheGreatElisaMousy, Aenlu, a_taller_tale, Aryashi, Yin and RiaTheDreamer for commenting! 
> 
> And now without further ado, this is the chapter where this story finally earns some of the weird tags that have been there since the beginning.

"Uh, Grif, do you have a minute?"

"Sure?" Not like Simmons didn't know that Grif had plenty of time on his hands, but okay. He followed Simmons into what looked like a mostly empty storage closet. Scenic. 

"Well, I'm sure you're wondering why I called you here", Simmons started stiffly. Grif looked around at the empty shelves and took a seat on an overturned bucket. 

"Lil' bit", he agreed. 

"It's… you know…", Simmons started awkwardly. Well, that didn't quite capture it. Simmons was always awkward. He did it in an even more awkward manner than usual, which Grif found noteworthy. He looked at Grif sitting down and seemed to conclude that him standing up while Grif was sitting would be even more awkward, so he sat down. On the shelf opposite, which creaked ominously at the weight of a cyborg. There was a shelf right at the height of Simmons' shoulder blades, too, so he had to sit in hunched over in a contortion that couldn't possibly be comfortable.

Notably awkward, even when taking Simmons as a baseline, all in all. 

"You know", Simmns repeated, looking at Grif's face, and then looking back down at his hands. He fidgeted a bit. Looked like he couldn't sit still, but with how he was sitting he couldn't exactly blame him for that one. 

"What? Are you just gonna mumble incoherently or is this getting to a point sometime this century?", Grif asked. Looked like his tone shook Simmons up even more. Good, maybe he'd lose his nerve and Grif could get out of this awkward situation. Not that he was feeling awkward himself, Simmons' was just radiating the feeling so much that Grif couldn't stop thinking the word and that was awkward in itself. 

"I'm… I'm getting there, don't rush me", Simmons snapped. "It's just…" 

Grif sighed and rubbed his forehead. This would probably take a while still. 

"You're rushing me", Simmons complained. 

"I didn't say anything." 

"No but you were…" Simmons made a vague gesture in Grif's direction. Grif just gave him an unimpressed stare back. "Maybe this was a bad idea." 

"I wouldn't know", Grif replied easily. He had absolutely no idea what Simmons might want or why he could've called him here. None. Nada. Zilch. Wasn't even sure what zilch really meant, but he knew more about that than about what Simmons was trying to talk about. No, really. "Can I go now?" 

"No, wait, this is important", Simmons said. And then continued not to say anything of importance. Or at all. 

"Yeah, I'd say I have better things to do, but we both know that's a lie, so I'm just gonna say I'm bored", Grif said. With no idea what Simmons might want to say, or why he was hesitating so much. No idea. Really. Shut up. 

"Wait, I mean it. This is important", Simmons repeated. He took a deep breath to collect himself and went on, "you… _died_ , Grif." It sounded like saying the word physically pained Simmons, and it made Grif want to flee the room as quickly as possible. "You died, and I couldn't even… you were just gone, from one minute to the next, and there wasn't even any… you know, moment." 

"What, so you're here to tell me I should die more slowly next time and that would bother you less?", Grif ventured. 

"No, why are you being so… it's just… you died and I didn't even have a chance to say… some things…" 

Okay, scratch what he'd said earlier, Grif definitely knew where this was going. And he had absolutely no intention of making this any easier on Simmons. Hell, no. He crossed his arms and fixed Simmons with an attentive stare. Or more like a confrontational one, really. 

"You know, things that were important", Simmons said, looking awkwardly off to the side like he hadn't prattled on about the importance of what he wanted to say three times already without getting to any fucking point. He seemed to be waiting for Grif to jump in and save him from some of the awkwardness, but yeah, that wasn't fucking happening. "Things that… you needed to know." 

"Oh really?", Grif asked drily. "Things like what you wanted to say when we were standing in front of a firing squad six years ago?" 

Simmons visibly bristled at that. Couldn't be comfortable with the shelf digging into his back. "You were the one who derailed that! I would've said something, but you…" 

"Yeah, I get that. Totally ruined the mood. It's been _six years._ " 

"Well there wasn't…" Simmons started, but cut himself off when he caught the look on Grif's face. There was no way in hell he was going to let Simmons get away with saying that there wasn't a good opportunity to say anything because there had been plenty. Six years of hanging out and talking every day.

"What, good moments? Like after I fell off that cliff when we fought the Meta? Or after the ship crash? Or I don't know, after the destruction of our home base in a nuclear blast? Or were none of those dramatic enough for you?" 

"It's not about drama", Simmons protested. 

"Oh, isn't it? Isn't that what you're trying to say, I just dropped dead, but you were dreaming of this big 'last words' moment with heartfelt confessions or whatever and you're miffed it didn't happen like that", Grif accused. Simmons opened his mouth, but then closed it again a moment later. 

"Well, better luck next time, I guess", Grif said, and got up. "I'm sure there's some other life or death situation in a few years that'll be just perfect." 

"No, wait, sit back down", Simmons implored. He grabbed Grif's forearm plating, and as much as Grif wanted to storm off to make a point, he let himself be dragged down enough to plop back down on the bucket. "You're right, okay? I was scared to say stuff, and I thought… I don't know, I was waiting for some special moment and it just didn't…" 

Simmons rubbed his hands over his face for a moment before running them up to his hair, and letting out a sigh. "But then you were dead. Just… gone, and I'd missed my chance and it was…" This time the pause wasn't because of awkwardness, Grif could tell. Simmons was genuinely hurting because of what happened, and it made Grif feel really uncomfortable. He'd mostly focussed on himself, on what this whole death thing meant to him, but the truth was, of course, if it hadn't gotten reversed it wouldn't have meant anything for him. He wouldn't have been around to think about it, to deal with it at all, and the real impact would've been on the people around him. The people who cared about him. Not that they showed it very often, but… 

"And then you came back", Simmons continued. "And I got a second chance, and I realized I have to do this, I can't waste this opportunity. So… it's just…" He looked back up at Grif. "It's one thing to think about the whole thing and actually doing it. And you're not exactly making it easy, you know?" 

"Tough shit", Grif said. He got it, he could imagine what Simmons had gone through, but he still wasn't going to help. 

"I just don't know how to say this without sounding…", Simmons gestured a bit, searching for the appropriate word. 

"Gay?", Grif supplied. One of the easiest ways to get Simmons flustered, and it didn't fail this time, either. But not quite the way it usually did. It got a blush and Simmons looking off to the side.

"Well, it's gonna sound gay." He said in a small voice. 

Finally. 

Fucking finally. 

Grif had planned on not helping Simmons, on making him spell out exactly what he was going to say, but he realized now that he didn't need that much. This was good enough, if it finally led somewhere. No hurried confessions in front of firing squads so you didn't have to face the consequences. Just an awkward and repressed idiot being fucking honest with himself for once. 

"You're a fucking idiot", Grif declared. Then he leaned forward, grabbed Simmons' dumb face that was hiding an even dumber brain, and kissed him.

It wasn't romantic, what with him precariously balanced on a bucket and Simmons sort of sliding from his shelf. It wasn't a particularly good kiss, either. It was way too long since Grif had done something like this, and Simmons wasn't exactly the most skilled at making out either. But this awkward clanging of teeth and too noisy mashing of lips was totally them. Grif and Simmons dysfunctional and bickering and better together than either of them would want to admit.

Only when he pulled back a little to breathe he noticed that Simmons had apparently never closed his god damn eyes and was just staring at him.

"Hua?", he asked eloquently. His expression was absolutely ridiculous and the asymmetry of his face only made it worse. 

"Yep", Grif said. He tried to keep his face neutral and nonchalant like this wasn't a big deal at all, which was probably the hardest he'd worked in recent memory. Just seeing Simmons opening and closing his mouth a few times like he was trying to reboot his brain made him want to burst out laughing. 

"Buh… wha…?", Simmons inquired. Grif fought really hard against his face muscles that wanted to burst out into a huge grin.

"Sort of", he agreed. It took another moment for Simmons to sort his thoughts out far enough to speak again. 

"Wait, so you also…?" 

"Looks like." 

"But then why… why didn't _you_ ever say anything? Why did _I_ have to be the one to do it, huh?" 

"Because you needed to get over yourself, first", Grif said, crossing his arms. 

"Wait, so you _knew?_ You didn't only have feelings for me, but you knew that I had feelings for you and you decided to just leave me hanging? What the hell?" The switch from flustered to indignant in Simmons' demeanour had happened surprisingly quickly. Probably because arguing was something he had a lot more experience with than anything else in this encounter. 

"Yeah, I knew. You totally wanted to turn that firing squad gig into a tearful confession. And I also knew that if I had said anything ever you would've just had a crisis and run for the hills." 

Simmons looked down at his shoes at that. Couldn't deny that one, could he?

"Okay, but… then why did you stop me from saying it in the first place?" 

"Because I didn't want to hear it." He contemplated for a moment if adding 'duh' was too childish or just the right amount of childish. "Duh." 

"So, back then you… didn't feel the same? And it changed later?" Simmons had his eyebrows crunched in concentration like Grif was a puzzle he had to figure out. 

"No, because a deathbed confession like that doesn't mean anything!" 

"Of course it does! It's very romantic or something. It's in all the movies!" 

"Yeah, but it's bullshit. I don't want you blurting out things about what I could've had right when there's no chance of ever having it. What's the point of getting over your stupid fear if it doesn't have any consequences?" 

Simmons blinked at him a few times. "…oh", he said after a moment. 

"Yeah, I don't want to go to my grave thinking, 'if only I'd known sooner'. But the better question is, why didn't you didn't say anything before now? We had plenty of time to talk about random bullshit over the years." 

"It's… I was…" his eyes darted between the rest of the empty shelves on the wall. "I guess I was just… scared." 

"Dude." Grif leaned back, lacing his fingers behind his head. "It's just me, what'd you have to be scared of?"

Simmons gaze snapped toward him in shock. Like he'd just said something completely outrageous, turning his entire world view on its head. Knowing Simmons that was probably true. A breathless chuckle escaped him. It sounded a tad hysterical, but there was something infectious about it nonetheless. Grif joined in and that just made Simmons laugh louder. 

So there they were. Two idiots giggling in a storage closet. 

 

* * *

 

Looking at 'his' hands, he felt like he was going to be sick. But not really. Absolutely everything felt foreign and wrong. He didn't know if he could be sick anymore, and he didn't know what it would be like if he did. 

From the moment awareness had returned till now he hadn't encountered a reflective surface. Which was probably a blessing. Or maybe a curse. Maybe both. Because as long as he didn't really know what he looked like, what kind of body it was he was living in, now, he could pretend that this was fine. That he would just go back to his allies and they would find a way to fix the strange way he was feeling and then he could just go back to normal. 

He knew that was an irrational dream. 

People didn't just go back to normal after being vaporized in a nuclear blast. 

And should he find a mirror somewhere in what was left of Armonia, what he would see would look nothing like Donald Doyle. He wasn't sure what it was actually going to look like, but seeing the scales on the four fingers on each hand he had a pretty good idea. 

There was a tingling all over. He felt too hot, like the fire that had consumed him was unwilling to let him go. If it was because of the explosion or because of whatever had happened after to turn him into this, he couldn't tell. 

Looking around what was left of Armonia wasn't making him feel any better. There wasn't really anything left. If you didn't know that a town had been there, you would've been hard pressed to find traces of it, at least around here. Further in the distance he could see the burnt out skeletons of buildings. 

Just a few days ago there had been people in these buildings, living and working and having fun, and now it was a wasteland. A wasteland roamed by monsters. 

Or maybe that was just him. 

He wasn't sure where to go, but staying here wasn't an option. Every step he took felt foreign on feet that weren't his. Every sight he saw looked unfamiliar through eyes that weren't properly his, either. 

But he had to keep going. He had to find his friends, his comrades, so that they could help him figure out what had happened to them. He hoped they were still around to find. 

 


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey everyone, sorry about the delay, AO3 was down yesterday when I wanted to post, so... monday instead. But hey, at least that means the time till the next chapter is shorter, right? On an unrelated note, you know what I hate? Studying cardiology. Cardiology is the worst. Stupid hearts, who needs them? 
> 
> Anyway, as always a big thanks to Aryashi, WreckItRhino, TheGreatElisaMousy, a_taller_tale, Yin, RiaTheDreamer, isurani, AriRashkae and Hakanaki for commenting and to Goodluckdetective for mentioning this story on Rec Day.

Simmons thought that he had never felt this nervous in his entire life. It was a complete lie, he'd felt plenty nervous many times and this probably wasn't the worst. And there wasn't really any reason to assume that anything would happen. 

No one could tell, he reminded himself. He may just have made out with Grif in a storage closet, and they were probably boyfriends now (were they? Really? That seemed more incomprehensible than anything else). But no one knew. He didn't look any different and neither did Grif, and them walking around together was absolutely nothing out of the ordinary, they always hung out together. 

So there was no reason to be nervous. There was no reason to wonder what anyone would think, because no one would know. 

" _Oh. My. God._ " Was Donut's voice always this shrill? Was it always this loud? Simmons whipped around and stared at the pink soldier approaching them with his helmet off and his hands clasped together under his chin. 

"Wh… what?", Simmons stuttered. 

"Sup", Grif said in a display of nonchalance that was exactly what Simmons had been going for and failed spectacularly at. It was almost cool. Simmons would deny forever and ever that he'd thought that word about Grif, but still. Kinda cool. 

"Oh, my god!", Donut reiterated. "This is great!" His hands moved up to his face smushing his own cheeks a bit. How could anyone's eyes be that sparkly? That didn't seem physically possible. 

"D… Donut. Fancy seeing you here, what a… coincidence. Surprise, uh…" Simmons gave another valiant attempt at nonchalance. Crashed and burned. Again. 

"Guys", Donut squealed. The whole posture might've looked cute if it weren't in the process of giving Simmons a heart attack. 

"What?", Grif asked, lighting up a cigarette like he didn't give a fuck. Maybe he really didn't, who knew. Maybe all the fucks he should've given had been magically transferred to Simmons via saliva and that's why Simmons was the only one who was such a wreck about this. 

Ha. As if he needed any help to become a wreck.

"I'm soooo happy!", Donut cooed. "This is amazing, that's exactly the kind of news we need for morale right now." 

"Wh… what news?" Simmons voice wobbled through several octaves there, but the question was valid. There was probably something important going on and Simmons was just being paranoid. Yep, that had to be it, some great news somewhere else. Ridiculous of him to think it could be about him and Grif at all, not even Donut could have such powers of insight, could he?

Maybe Sarge had woken up?

"I've been shipping you guys forever, I'm so glad you're finally a couple!" Donut smashed Simmons' delusions in one fell swoop. 

"Wha… couple why would you…" Simmons stammered. Maybe there was some way to salvage the situation, plausible deniability… 

"Well, aren't you? Don't tell me my gaydar is broken." Donut looked genuinely distressed at the thought, but there was no way to take that into account. The rumor needed to be quenched right here, right now. Simmons opened his mouth to tell his teammate that yes, totally the gaydar was broken…

"No, it isn't", Grif said.

And. Took. Simmons'. Hand! 

As in hand holding. 

It was one of the sweetest things Grif had ever done, and also the most terrifying. 

"I knew it!", Donut cheered. "Oh my god, I'm so happy for you. It's been a long time coming." The grin on Donut's face was so big it was a wonder the corners of his mouth weren't touching his ears yet. Simmons meanwhile did an admirable job of keeping his breathing mostly even. Passing out from hyperventilating wouldn't do him any favors. 

Grif shrugged at Donut. Like it wasn't a big deal.

Maybe it wasn't, to him. Simmons was honestly scared to find out. Maybe he just didn't care as much about the whole thing.

"But, you know, you have to keep up some rules", Donut advised, suddenly looking more serious. He pointed a finger at Grif. "No eating his brains, no biting him. No matter how sweet his blood may smell. You can't bite him before the fourth novel, when he nearly dies in child birth of your demonic baby. It's all very romantic." 

"Donut, I'm not a fucking vampire, stop quoting Twilight." 

"Who's pregnant?" Oh great. Just the thing Simmons needed for his mortification to be complete. He turned around to see Lavernius Tucker of all people approaching, looking casual but mildly interested. Maybe Simmons could somehow diffuse this, stop it from getting out to too many people…

"Oh _hey_ Tucker. Great news!", Donut announced before Simmons even had a chance to come up with a plan for how to stop him from saying what he was just in the process of saying. "Grif and Simmons just got together!" 

Tucker's eyebrows climbed up, and Simmons braced himself for whatever the reaction was going to be. Their resident 'lady's man' finding out… he had no idea how this was going to end, but he could see the blue's fist curling together, and this was pretty much exactly what he'd feared. 

Tucker fist pumped in the air and shouted, "Finally!" 

Simmons blinked a couple of times. It took him a moment to remember to breathe, but it happened when Grif squeezed his hand that he was still holding. He simultaneously wanted to tell him to stop and hold tighter. This was too obvious, people could tell. But holding it was also really nice. 

"This doesn't… bother you?", Simmons ventured. Maybe because he had a death wish or something. There was probably definitely something wrong with him. Who would get a positive reaction to something and then challenge the negative to happen, anyway?

"The fuck you talking about?", Tucker asked. "The fact that it took you twelve fucking years to get your act together when I knew you guys were meant to be married the first time I heard you talking to one another? Nah, I'm pretty chill about that, I know not everyone is a certified love guru." 

"Huh?", Simmons asked. "No I mean, you know…" he gestured to himself and Grif, not sure how to express what he meant. 

"What, the gay thing? Dude who do you take me for? Love doesn't discriminate, why would I?" Tucker sounded genuinely offended at the suggestion and that eased Simmons' mind a little. Made him feel slightly guilty, too.

"What's going on over here?" Oh as if Simmons needed any more people to stumble onto this. His hand felt very sweaty in the glove where Grif was still holding his hand, and he was starting to question his motivations. Was he trying to show his support or love or whatever, or was he showing this to everyone on purpose so that Simmons had to suffer through everyone finding out at once? Just admitting stuff to Grif had been stressful enough, give a guy a break! 

Agent Washington strode near them with a mildly interested look on his face, and Simmons really wanted to get away from here to hide. At least Sarge wouldn't be coming around to be the next authority figure disappointed by Simmons' live choices. 

"Oh Wash, this is awesome, Grif and Simmons are finally together", Tucker announced enthusiastically. Sinking into the floor sounded incredibly appealing right at this very moment. 

He'd been extraordinarily lucky with everyone taking it well so far, but there was no way that luck could last. Wash's eyebrows scrunched up a bit, a tiny crease appearing between them. Simmons hoped that he wasn't shaking too badly. 

"Oh", Wash said, and then gestured for Tucker. The 'Oh' didn't have any particular inflection, like he wanted to spare them from his reaction too soon. It was a small mercy, better than what his Dad had said when… Better not to say anything at all than all the yelling, he supposed, but he still felt about an inch tall even in his power armor. 

Wash whispered something to Tucker, presumably so they wouldn't hear, but Simmons was so focused on his reaction that he honed in on every word. 

"What do you mean they're together?", Wash asked. Tucker rolled his eyes dramatically and didn't bother lowering his voice even a little bit. 

"Dude, you're a badass Freelancer, I'm not gonna explain the birds and the bees to you. I bet Doctor Grey has some diagrams for you to look at", Tucker said. 

"That's not…" Wash protested. Again, in a whisper, but Simmons still heard. "I mean… weren't they together before?" 

"What, no, where've you been?" 

"But I thought…" 

"How long did you think they were a couple?", Donut asked in a pleasant tone. Looked like Simmons wasn't the only one who'd been indiscreetly eavesdropping. 

"Well, since… I met them? I always assumed…" Wash was starting to blush and it took Simmons a moment to catch up with what he meant. He'd always thought they were together… so that meant… he didn't have a problem with it? 

"Oh yeah, loads of people make that mistake", Donut said. "When we united the armies so many New Republic folk asked me about it because they all thought the must be a couple. Don't worry about it, Wash." 

"No, seriously, pay attention, the fuck are you paying attention to?", Tucker asked. He sounded almost affronted. "You've been on our team for how long, now? You could've figured that out." 

"But, I mean with how they…", Wash tried to defend himself, gesturing to where Grif was still. Holding. Simmons'. Hand. "And everything!" 

"I know", Donut agreed. "Like I said, super common mistake." 

"That's no excuse", Tucker insisted. "I've had to watch these idiots avoid the issue for years, do you know how I've suffered? And you just didn't even fucking notice? Unbelievable. Aren't you super soldiers supposed to have some observational skills?" 

"I did observe, I just thought…" 

Simmons head was turning so much from the conversation, that somehow, spotting an alien making its way toward their group didn't even really surprise him. 

"You think the alien is gonna have an opinion about this, too?", he asked Grif almost conversationally, before he realized what exactly he was saying, there. 

"Alien? The fuck are you talking about…" Tucker started before he turned around and looked at the alien making its way to them. It didn't look as imposing as most other aliens Simmons had seen, it wasn't wearing armor, and wasn't moving particularly fast. 

But almost as soon as Simmons had said it, everyone had their helmets back on, and Simmons scrambled to get his own back on his head. Wash had his gun raised first, and pointed it at the intruder. Grif's hand left Simmons' and while he'd been hoping for that before, he missed it almost as soon as he let go. This just in, Simmons had it bad for Grif, other news at six. 

"I thought all the aliens here were dead?", Donut asked. He sounded a lot less cheerful than just a moment ago. 

"They were supposed to be", Wash answered grimly with that touch of Freelancer dramatics only he was capable of. "Guess we should ask Doctor Grey about that." 

Everyone held their gun at attention, but aside from Wash they didn't aim it at the alien yet. The Elite… Sangheili was probably the politically correct phrase. It looked scary, like all aliens ( _Simmons, don't be so racist. Speciesist…_ , he admonished himself mentally), but somehow not really threatening. It took Simmons a bit to realize that it didn't even have a gun. 

"Agent Washington, I'm so glad to have found you", the alien said, as it got closer to them, in a posh British accent. 

Wait, Posh British accent?

And the voice seemed familiar, too.

"Doyle?", Wash asked with that trademark screech his voice sometimes did when he was surprised by something, lowering his gun. 

"Yes, I'm afraid. I know, I probably do not look very much like myself at the moment… truth be told I don't much feel like myself, either… but it's very good to see all of you, safe and sound. This is the New Republic's former base, am I correct? I didn't have any navigation equipment, I was quite worried I might've gotten turned around." 

"Get Doctor Grey." 

 

* * *

 

Doctor Grey had sometimes been critiqued on her bedside manner. Some patients apparently didn't find it too reassuring to have their doctor be excited about symptoms that were causing them great distress. She really did try to work on that. Still it remained one of the few things she consistently failed to get right. 

"Absolutely fascinating", she announced cheerfully. "I've never seen anything like this. Or read about it. I mean, we've been having a bit of a drought on medical literature coming in what with all the communication blocks to the outside, so I'm not exactly up to date, but I think this might be a first." 

"Well, I'm glad you're finding this so fascinating, Emily", Donald said with a tremble in his voice. Well, if it was Donald, the jury was still out on that, but hearing him speak she found it hard to doubt. 

"So, do you think it's really him?", Kimball asked. Impatient as always. She was standing a noticeable distance away from both of them, her arms crossed as if to put more space between herself and the Feds. Business as usual. Except for the part where one of them had recently switched species, but hey. 

"Well, based on cursory examination such as asking questions I'm reasonably sure only he would know the answers to, I would be inclined to say yes", Emily announced. "But as far as real medical evidence goes, this is a bit more complicated. His DNA is completely alien, and so are his neural patterns, but given enough time I might be able to figure out a way to convert one neural scan into the pattern of the other species and compare properly. Not that that's ever been attempted before." 

"How much time is enough time?", Agent Carolina asked, somehow even less patiently. Dr Grey had the theory that it was somehow correlated to her armor enhancement. She really hoped to find the time to try and confirm the hypothesis.

"Well, considering I don't have any precedent data to fall back on, this might be an all-nighter", Emily announced cheerfully. Only Simmons looked adequately impressed by that statement. Apparently none of the others had enough of an appreciation for how complex neural patterns were, or how complex the differences between alien and human anatomy were. 

"While I'm sure that's very interesting, I don't think we can afford to have our chief medical officer use her time for this at the moment", Kimball decided. "We really don't need you sleep deprived." 

"That's a fair point", Emily conceded. Not knowing about the two hours of sleep and 10 mg of stimulants that had carried her through the last few days would not hurt Kimball. "But as long as I don't do that I cannot give you a scientifically funded identification." 

"As long as we're not sure if he really is who he is, we can't let him back into his old job", Agent Washington said, sounding apologetic. 

"No, that's quite alright", Doyle alien said. "I would not make any different decision were I in your position." 

"So, he really just turned into a Sangheili?", Tucker asked, looking torn between standing in the corner looking cool and going closer to blatantly stare and poke like Captain Caboose was currently doing. 

"No, not exactly", Emily declared brightly. She really liked it when people asked her to explain fun things. "I don't know the exact name of the species, but it looks like they share a common ancestor with the modern Sangheili quite recently. Evolutionarily speaking recent, only a couple hundred million years ago. I don't know if they'd be able to reproduce with modern Sangheili, but that's not the most useful definition of what a species is, anyway." 

"True, the Sangheili managed to reproduce with Tucker, and he's not the same species as them", Donut said. 

"We think", Grif added. 

"Dude, the fuck is that supposed to mean?", Tucker asked, to which Grif just shrugged his shoulders. 

"Good point. And definitely something I'm going to be following up on", Emily said with a smile. Not sure why Tucker shrunk back at that, but that wasn't really the issue here. "Anyway, Doyle shares many characteristics with the Sangheili, but not quite all. Looks like he was reconstructed into whatever aliens inhabited this planet before. This is all very interesting, phylogenetically." One look around the room showed her that no one there cared anywhere close to as much as she did about phylogenics. Their loss. Emily had long since learned to stop caring about other people's lack of caring.

"That makes sense, they built this thing to avoid extinction, so I guess it makes people into aliens when there's not enough of them left to reconstruct to how they looked before", Tucker mused. It was a surprisingly astute observation, considering who it was coming from. Not that Emily thought he was stupid, it just felt like he was more talented in… other areas. 

"Okay I hate to be the one to point out the obvious here", Epsilon said, activating his projection on Agent Carolina's shoulder. 

"Doyle is not wearing pants?", Caboose suggested. 

"No. I mean he isn't, but it's not what I meant." Epsilon paused for a moment. "No seriously, I hate to point it out, isn't anyone going to take this one?" Everyone just looked at him expectantly. There were so many things to point out, such as the lack of clothing that Emily honestly wasn't sure what the AI was going for. 

"Fine, guess it's up to me", Epsilon said after another moment, with an exaggerated roll of his helmet to signify eye rolling. "Doyle didn't die in the purge." 

"No, he died in a nuclear explosion, dude", Tucker said. "That's why there weren't enough bits of him to put him back together so the alien thing just built a new one." 

"Exactly. He wasn't in the purge, but your alien magic thing restored him anyway." Epsilon cast a sideways glance at Doyle. "Sort of. Anyway, if it restored him, then who else is back that we thought was dead already?" 

Agent Washington and Agent Carolina shared a grim look at the statement. Tucker's eyes grew quite a bit in size at the thought. Simmons and Donut looked shocked. Kimball gave a look of grim determination. No wonder she got along so well with the Freelancers, they all seemed to share a sense of dramatics. Grif looked more surprised at everyone else's surprise. Looked like he'd figured that out before the others. Just like Emily and Epsilon had considered this point obvious. Doyle looked… like an alien, still. Try as she might, Emily really didn't have much experience with trying to read the emotions on reptilian features. Not that 'reptilian' was a scientifically accurate classification for what he was, but it was a reasonably close approximation.

Captain Caboose on the other hand… "Well that must be because Doily was on the nice list." 

"What?", Simmons asked. He was probably thinking of some sort of spreadsheet. From her previous conversations with him, Dr Grey had gleaned that he did that quite a lot. 

"Of course Santa made a list and checked it twice, it's so obvious." 

"What, and you think he didn't resurrect people on the naughty list?", Grif asked. 

"Of course. It makes perfect sense, when you think about it", Caboose declared. It would make perfect sense if Santa's relation to the old Earth myth was a little more substantial than them both having the same color. 

"If that were true, Grif definitely wouldn't be standing here", Simmons supplied.

"Wait what happened to all the romance from before?", Tucker asked, sounding affronted. Just at the mention of romance Captain Simmons human ear turned bright red. An additional LED at the top of his robot ear also lit up red. It was a surprisingly attentive design feature. 

"Those two points are completely unrelated", Simmons said. "He doesn't have to be virtuous for me to like him." Grif gave a shrug. 

"Looks like Simmons likes bad boys", Donut declared cheerily. Emily wasn't sure she'd go quite as far in her description of Captain Grif, but the point still stood. 

"What, that's not…" Simmons protested weakly. 

"Assuming that Santa didn't discriminate based on naughty or nice, we have a big problem on our hands", Agent Washington declared. "If people from the destruction of Armonia are coming back, then all the pirate troops we blew up are likely coming back, and maybe even Sharkface." 

"Not to mention from my readings the aliens who once inhabited this planet were physically quite a bit stronger than the average human", Emily threw in. "Of course technology is an important factor as well, since I don't think they'll be able to acquire armor that fits them, but it might still be an advantage." 

"Ugh, killing Sharkface was annoying enough the first time", Epsilon complained. 

"What do you know, you weren't even there the first time", Carolina admonished. 

"What? Of course I was there, in Armonia, remember? We were fighting on the street, with the train and everything?" 

"Well the way he tells it, Wash and I dropped a building on him a few years back." 

"And did you?", Tucker asked. 

"Well, we dropped _a_ building. That he was in. But not specifically aimed to be _on_ him. We weren't trying to personally victimize him", Wash defended. 

"Oh, hey Felix." 

Huh? 

At Caboose's easy greeting everyone froze. And then, as if compelled by an invisible force turned to look at the screen at the back of the room that had turned on without any of them noticing.

"Hey, Captain dumbass", Felix said jovially. He looked… surprisingly good for what had allegedly happened to him. Didn't seem like he had experienced all that much alien DNA resequencing at all, or at least it wasn't visible beneath his armor. 

What was visible, however, was a hole in his visor. Emily had never seen his face before, but the hole wasn't that telling either, what with the big knife handle protruding from the eye socket. 

"How are you all doing?", Felix said, in a charming voice that only sounded very mildly of backstab. 

"We're great", Caboose replied. Which probably wasn't the most accurate description of what was going on here at the moment, but it wasn't bad as far as potential responses to your enemy appearing to threaten you on your screen went. 

"Good. Glad to hear it", Felix said. "Say, Wash, you know you lost this when we last met." He pointed at the knife sticking out of his head. Or rather, into his head. He was surprisingly coherent considering how far that must be in there. Really, Emily wouldn't expect someone with anything sticking into their brain stem to be conscious, let alone talking. "Maybe we could meet up, so I can return it to you." 

"You can keep it", Agent Washington said stiffly. 

"Oh no no no", Felix said, shaking his head. It was kind of mesmerizing, watching the knife handle move from side to side. "I really should give this back to you. Just like you gave it to me." Only part of one of Felix's eyes was visible, but it showed enough of his expression to make Emily glad it wasn't directed at her. She'd seen a lot of disgusting things over the course of her career, but she suspected that whatever would be uncovered were she to psychoanalyze the merc would easily top all of those things. 

"You can come and try", Carolina challenged. The way Agent Washington's helmet turned toward her seemed to suggest that he wasn't the biggest fan of that idea. 

"Oh, don't worry about that", Felix said. It was really uncanny how pleasant his voice sounded, considering the vile things he was using it for. "We're already there." 

Just at that moment the door burst open and one of Kimball's aides stumbled in. 

"General Kimball, our forces at the communication tower siege are under attack!", he said, panting. Looked like he'd run all the way from the main radio station. 

"See you", Felix said, as smugly as smug went. He gave a cheeky little wave before the transmission turned off and it almost made her feel sick to her stomach. Almost. 

 


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Once again, a big thanks to Aryashi, TheGreatElisaMousy, a_taller_tale, Yin, Aenlu, RiaTheDreamer and Fangrl for your lovely comments! You guys rock! 
> 
> Little warning for this part, the action scene at the end gets kinda violent. Not super graphic, just wanted you guys to be aware.

After the Purge had hit they hadn't been able to continue with their assault on the communication tower. But they had left people stationed there, guarding their alien equipment and cutting off the remaining pirate's supply lines. The pirates had holed themselves up inside the temple, and it had been a stalemate for days, neither side moving. 

It wasn't a stalemate anymore. 

Just from the pelican's narrow window Wash could already tell that the area was hot and their side wasn't winning. He couldn't make out how many hostiles there were, but several of them didn't look human. It gave him an odd feeling in his stomach that he'd already experienced upon seeing General Doyle's new form. 

He hadn't been in the Great War that long before Project Freelancer had recruited him, and shifted his idea of friend and foes. But he had seen battles with the Covenant, and there was a certain reaction you learned to seeing Elites on the battlefield. The war was long over, Tucker even had a Sangheili child, it wasn't the same anymore. 

And yet. It also was. Seeing the hulking alien forms attacking his own gave him weird flashbacks. Odd, really. His flashbacks usually had a different focus.

"Open the rear hatch", Carolina barked from the front of the cockpit. 

"What? Are you insane? We're way too high up", Grif protested. Not that it hadn't been obvious, but he was no 479er when it came to daring flying stunts. If it had been her, the door would already be open and everyone else would be struggling to hold on for dear life. 

"Open the hatch", Carolina repeated. Wash pressed the button to lower the crash harness. He knew how that kind of argument with her usually ended. Simmons and Donut followed suit. Caboose just grabbed one of the railings above his head, making it look like he was on a public bus instead of a space ship. 

"C, are you sure about… whoa!", Epsilon's voice was cut off as Grif pressed the release with a shrug. 

The rush of air really wasn't nearly as bad as it would have been would they have done that in deep space, but it was still enough to make Tucker fall flat on his face and then desperately grab for the nearest railing to keep him inside the cabin. Caboose barely even moved, still looking like he was on the bus. 

Carolina took a running start and jumped out of the cabin. Wash wasn't sure what her landing strategy was going to be, but he was confident that she had it covered. 

"Close the hatch again, she's out", Wash yelled over the rushing winds. 

"You sure? You don't wanna do your super soldier thing and follow her?", Grif asked. 

"No I really don't." 

"Fine." At the push of a button the hatch closed again, and the cabin got a whole lot quieter. 

"Little warning next time", Tucker sputtered as he pushed himself up from his position on the floor. 

"Carolina asked twice, pay attention", Grif said. 

"Oh as if you would've paid attention to that if it had been you!", Tucker complained. "You're not better at that than I am." 

"Nope. But that's the price you pay. Don't pay attention, sometimes you fall on your face. You gotta accept the trade offs", Grif mused. 

"That's very Zen of you", Donut commented. 

"Yup. I'm like a philosophical genius." 

"As if", Simmons grumbled. 

"Okay seriously, you guys are doing the couple thing all wrong. When you get together you're supposed to be nice to one another", Tucker complained. 

"He's right. A successful relationship is all about communication and being supportive of each other. Well that and…" Donut said. But before he could reveal what the last thing was going to be, Caboose piped up. 

"Are we there yet?" 

"Yeah, sorta", Grif grumbled.

"What's sorta mean? It's a yes or no question", Simmons admonished. A loud thump and the impact running through the cabin answered his question. Yep, definitely no 479er. Several of them hit their heads at the side of the ship. Not Wash, though. He had at least enough super soldier skills for that. Tucker  promptly fell down again. 

"Grif, you're a shitty flyer!", Simmons complained, rubbing his head. 

"Yeah well, if you wanna do it be my guest." 

"Guys, let's just get to our troops", Wash ordered. "No stalling." 

"Fine, put me back in the line of fire, I was already dead yesterday, what's one more time…" Grif complained, but he got out of his seat anyway. Wash allowed himself a moment to look at the Sim troopers that were with him. His new team. His new family. He'd let them down before, when they hadn't been fast enough at the purge. He wasn't going to let that happen again.

 

* * *

 

"I know you're anxious, but you know that they can handle this", Doyle's voice said. Maybe it was actually Doyle speaking, but Kimball wasn't too sure if she was willing to believe that just yet. Knowing whether or not this was actually him made a huge difference for someone in his position. 

"I know that", she said testily. The Freelancers and the Sim troopers had gone out to stop the attack at the communication temple, but they couldn't take all of their troops. Having the New Republic headquarter as their base was important, so they'd left people to defend it. Including Vanessa herself. Which made perfect sense, considering she knew the territory best and knew how to lead the people who were left. And yet… 

"Well, it's just that I can sense your frustration", Doyle said. 

"Oh and how are you sensing that? Did the aliens give you mind reading powers, too? Is that it?", Vanessa snapped. 

"No, it's just that you're rather… tense." 

"Tense? I'm not tense, who's…?" Even as she was saying that, she tested out her posture, and realized that yes, she probably was. She didn't like inactivity. It may be her job to send others to war and coordinate and lead, but when it came right down to it she always preferred being in the thick of things, making a difference with her own two hands, putting her life on the line right alongside those she was in charge of.

Still, he had a point. She couldn't change the situation right now, and standing up when there wasn't really any reason for it wasn't helping. She sat down on the nearest chair but couldn't bring herself to uncross her arms. 

For a moment they both kept quiet. It was far from a comfortable silence, but if it was really Doyle and not some alien infiltrator, then this was the closest they'd ever gotten to companionable. 

"I was wondering… If I may…?", the alien abomination ventured. 

"What?", Vanessa snapped. 

"It's just… I was wondering… what did you tell the troops about me? I gleaned there was some sort of speech you gave them after Armonia fell?" 

"Yeah what about it?" 

"Well, I guess… it's just interesting to find out what my legacy would've been. You know, if this" he gestured to his newly changed body. "Hadn't happened. Did you tell them I was an incompetent tyrant and they should all be glad to be rid of me?" 

Something about the question, maybe the vulnerable tone, maybe the little self deprecating snort at the end of it, made Kimball pause. She'd been so focused on the new battle, and on distrust of this alien that she hadn't really considered, what if it was really Doyle? What if this was her chance to make things right? 

Well then it was still Doyle, of course, and though her opinion of him might've changed quite a bit after Armonia, she wasn't sure if they could've ever been friends. 

But she could at least be honest with him.

"No, I actually didn't", she admitted. "I told them you had a vision for a better future and that you saw something in our two armies that I didn't." 

"That's… very kind of you." There was a wistful sort of surprise in his tone, and she wasn't sure how to take that. "Not quite what I would've expected you to have said." 

"I meant it", Kimball admitted. "I… probably misjudged you. The real Doyle, anyway, I'm still not completely convinced that you're him, but… in the end, there was a lot more to you than I ever would've given you credit for." 

"That's… well, I don't quite know what to say to that", Doyle admitted. He didn't add anything else, and they fell back into silence. It was getting a lot closer to companionable silence, now. Kimball found that her shoulders were less tense now, and her arms had uncrossed without her making a conscious choice to do so.

"There is… one thing I'd like to request, though", Doyle ventured after a moment. Kimball felt herself tense up again. If he was trying to give orders then they were going to have a problem. She'd have no problem conceding his old power to him if it was proven to actually be him. But only then. 

"What is it?", she asked tensely. From his flinch she could tell he knew that the nice moment had passed. Learning how to read an alien's body language certainly wasn't what she expected out of seeing Doyle again.

"I would just…" He was choosing his words very carefully, she could tell. "I would prefer if you didn't tell the troops about this development. You know, my… current status." 

That wasn't exactly what she expected to hear. 

"What? Why?" 

"Well it's just… I'm not exactly comfortable with this… situation that I find myself in", Doyle ventured. "And I can tell that with the possible exception of Emily, other people aren't, either. Your suspicion of my identity is completely justified. I don't think knowing about this would help the troops in any way, it might even cause more unrest. So I'd prefer if this news were kept on the 'down lo' as Captain Tucker put it when I asked him the same question." 

It was sound logic, but it still had her blinking stupidly in her helmet for a moment. Here she'd been worried about him undermining her authority. She hadn't been prepared for him to practically do the exact opposite. 

Looked like she hadn't quite been done misjudging him, then. 

 

* * *

 

It was really not a long way down, but Epsilon’s bitching made it seem like an eternity. She'd dropped from far more impressive heights without issue long before she even had an AI. Four Seven Niner had never been particularly considerate when deciding what was or wasn’t a safe distance to disembark from. Grif had been almost nice by making sure they got just a little closer to the ground before opening the hatch. It was a nice sentiment, not wanting her to get smashed into a pancake, presumably, but ultimately unnecessary. 

Just like Epsilon's complaining.

"Can't just do that kind of shit all willy nilly all the time, what the hell is wrong with you? I thought we talked about this…" He was ranting as she landed in a perfect roll. 

"Please. I nailed it", she said. 

"Oh how reassuring", he complained. "You know, I'm kind of tethered to your armor and your implants, if you get crushed to death, my chances aren't too peachy, either." 

"We're already on the ground", she reminded him. From the feelings he was flooding the implants with, she could tell that that didn't stop his frustration. 

"Yeah, but how do I know you won't just jump from a fucking space ship again and then I get flattened into ones and zeroes? You gotta be responsible here, C." 

She gave an amused little huff and made no promises. Epsilon let some more of his frustration seep into her implants, but then let it go. 

They didn't have time to waste on bickering, anyhow. They'd landed a little bit away from the battlefield, and he didn't protest when she activated the speed unit for a quick burst.

It did not look great. But thankfully not horrible. So far their troops were holding position, but it was clear that the previously undermanned and underequipped space pirates were suddenly outnumbering their own by a pretty substantial margin. 

Equipment wise the United Armies of Chorus still held the advantage. Epsilon sent a detailed analysis to her HUD. There were 34 of their troops there, with plenty of alien weaponry to keep them afloat. Four were wounded, none critically, no deaths. Good. Carolina would just have to make sure it stayed that way.

The analysis on the pirates wasn't exactly inspiring confidence, though. There were 63 of them in Epsilon's sensor range. "Don't know, there might be more coming from those hills or from inside the temple, scanning in there is a bitch", he commented. 15 seemed to be regular space pirates of the variety that they'd fought before, standard issue UNSC armor, standard issue weaponry, running low on ammo from having been besieged for several days, easy enough to handle. The rest were all genetically modified. 

A few had missing limbs replaced with alien ones or some such thing, but most of them were, like Doyle, full blown aliens. Which was both a disadvantage and an advantage. None of them were wearing armor, even if a few had tried to put on helmets which didn't hold particularly well on their newly shaped heads. They also hadn't brought any firearms. They were, however, as Epsilon's scan showed, quite a bit stronger than the average human. 

"Agent Carolina!", one of their troops yelled out. "It's so good you're here!" 

"Status report", she ordered. "Which one do I need to take out first?" 

Without hesitation the Fed soldier pointed in the direction of the far left. An alien (resurrected Charon mook, Epsilon corrected inside her head) was currently throwing a New Republic soldier across the battle field toward the rest of his friends. 

"Got it. Agent Washington's bringing the Reds and Blues in a few minutes, try to hold position till then." 

"We will, thank you", the soldier said, her shoulders visibly slumping in relief at the mention of reinforcements. 

Carolina gave a mental signal to Epsilon and activated the speed boost. She rushed toward the New Republic soldier who'd just been thrown into the line of fire, picked him up and returned him safely behind their own lines of defense in the span of a few seconds. 

"I was hoping you'd show up", A familiar voice said as she turned toward the alien that had been pointed out to her. _You know, none of them are really aliens_ , Epsilon complained once again. 

"And here I am", Carolina said. He took a few deliberate steps toward her, almost looking like a wild animal circling its prey. She definitely knew that voice, why was she thinking of animals…?

"Good. I've got some payback to get through", he growled. He flexed his big alien arms and drew himself up to full height, which forced Carolina to look up at him. Seemed like he was a lot more comfortable with his newly acquired alien physique than Doyle. 

"Do you have a credit card? I hear the rent in hell gets paid in advance", Epsilon quipped, projecting over her shoulder. There was an odd wave of nostalgia coming from the AI, but Carolina had no time or focus to waste on asking why that was. 

"Oh, you'll find out soon enough", the alien growled. Seemed like growling was the only thing he did. "I'm gonna wipe that arrogant look of your face and sweep out the floor from under you. Break every bone in your body and then maybe you'll understand what I've been through." 

"What the fuck is with this guy?", Epsilon asked at the dramatic diatribe. 

And Carolina finally realized who they were dealing with. Really shouldn't have taken this long, come to think of it, but for all his menacing posturing, Sharkface was kind of forgettable once you got down to it. 

"First you drop a building on me, then a nuke. I'm gonna make you pay for all of that, _Freelancer._ " The way he said it made it sound like an insult, but it also made her feel oddly proud. He was right, she was a Freelancer and he was just some merc who she'd beaten twice before. Looked like third time would be the charm. 

"Actually we didn't drop a nuke on you. You got riddled full of bullets and then a nuclear reactor explosion obliterated your corpse", Epsilon corrected, the little smartass that he was. _Hey, I'm only little because your suit doesn't have enough power for bigger projections, inside I am huge._

"And you will pay for that." Come to think of it, his new face fit the moniker of Sharkface a little better than his old one. He still did not look anything like a shark, but now his teeth were a whole lot more impressive.

"Yeah you said that already. Also, you know, C wasn't actually the one who shot you", Epsilon mused. "That was actually Wash and Kimball, so you're kinda barking up the wrong tree here." 

"I know. They're gonna pay, too, once I'm done with _you."_

Not that it was special as far as smack talk went, but the statement rubbed Carolina the wrong way. She didn't take well to people threatening her teammates, and she decided that she was done with the idle conversation. 

Completely in sync with her thoughts, Epsilon put an analysis of Sharkface's combat capabilities in her HUD. No armor, no weapons, strong scaly hide and presumably a whole lot of physical strength that Carolina couldn't necessarily match. Close quarter combat not recommended. That last part was bolded and in red. _I get it_ , she thought at the AI.

The assertion made sense, of course, but she couldn't deny the itch she felt to try out how hand to hand combat would go in that situation. She'd never fought against an unarmed Sangheili before, and she'd love to find out what that would be like. 

_C,_ Epsilon admonished inside her head, and she conceded. She pulled her battle rifle off her back and pointed it at Sharkface. He ducked out of the way before she could get her first shot out, and lunged for her. 

A short burst of the speed unit got her out of his range and she shot again. This time several rounds hit him, but he didn't seem fazed by it. 

And he was _fast._

She didn't remember either him or the Elites being this fast. Epsilon activated the speed boost again and she jumped on a nearby rock, trying to gain the high ground. She shot at him again, but it looked like even without armor the alien scales were a lot more difficult to penetrate. 

He started climbing the rock and she jumped off it again, putting it between her and her assailant. She'd managed to get him away from her troops a bit, but not far enough. And looking at the rock her back was to the other space pirates. She started running and found another rock to take cover behind. Luckily most of the other pirates didn't have guns. 

They seemed to think Sharkface had it handled, and they might have been right. Carolina fed another clip into her rifle, but she had a feeling that would not be her winning strategy. 

"Come out and face me!", Sharkface roared. 

_On the plus side, he doesn't have any flamethrowers this time_ , Epsilon remarked, before putting a path on her HUD that would take them further away from both her troops and the space pirates, to give them some room to take the bastard out. 

"Who knows, maybe he breathes fire now?" 

"Wha…? Oh because he looks like a lizard and dragons are lizards? That's speciesist, C." 

A punch destroyed the rock she was taking cover behind and debris rained down on her armor as a fist reached for her. She rolled out of the way and took aim again. Her shot hit the back of his fist dead on, and finally there was a reaction as he pulled back with a curse. She tried to press her advantage and fired more rounds at him.

_Keep your distance_ , Epsilon warned as she advanced. Damn, she really wasn't happy about the long range fighting. She much preferred getting up close and personal, ramming her fist into someone a couple thousand times, but of course Church was right.

Sharkface emerged from behind the remains of the rock, and Carolina needed her speed boost to get enough distance between them again. Using the speed boost going backwards was tricky, but she didn't dare put her back to him. 

If anything he seemed to get even more impossibly fast. As the rush of the speed boost ended he'd almost caught up with her again. He entered her range and Epsilon threw up the bubble shield. 

"What did you do that for? I had this!", Carolina shouted at the AI. 

"No, you did not 'have this'. He'd've pounded you to dust", Epsilon said. It didn't really matter, anyway. Now the shield was already up so they had to deal with what would happen going forward.

"You can't hide behind that thing forever, Freelancer", Sharkface taunted, circling the bubble. He didn't really remind her of a shark. More of a jaguar or some other big cat stalking its prey. Maybe a puma. Not that she was prey. It would be a cold day in hell before anyone could claim to have caught her. 

"Church, do you think you can do that trick Theta did with North and the shield?", Carolina asked. She could feel a hum of calculations running in the back of her implants. 

"I… I don't know", he admitted after a moment. "That's not that easy to do, and it's not your only enhancement…" 

"That's fine", Carolina said, keeping her voice steady. Sure she would've liked to snipe Sharkface through the shield, but she'd learned the hard way that pushing Epsilon to do something he thought was beyond his capabilites wouldn't end well. 

The great thing about her enemy not having any weapons was his limited range, the downside was his greater weight and speed. Combine weight and speed and you get a lot of ouch. 

_It's not bad if you don't let it hit you._

They'd gotten closer and closer to the side of the communication temple. There was still a comfortable distance to the pirates at the main entrance, and her HUD didn't read any more hostiles than the ones Epsilon had already accounted for. 

"Epsilon, on my mark drop the shield", Carolina instructed.

"Wait, what's your plan-" 

"Mark." 

Just as she'd asked, Epsilon dropped the shield and Carolina dropped the rifle, switching it out as fast as possible for her grappling hook. She aimed it at the nearest outcropping of the temple and swung up. Sharkface had been lunging toward her, trying to get her in punching range. But now her feet were coming right at him, and she swung with all her weight into his head. 

There was a satisfying crunch, but she didn't have the time to stick around and appreciate it. Her momentum was lost from the impact so she detached the grappling hook and landed in a roll. 

Sharkface shook his unsharky head, and it looked like he was dazed. Good. Carolina wasted no time and shot her grappling hook at another ledge. She swung back into the air, and hit him with her feet again, but this time he was prepared for her. 

He grabbed her foot and yanked, hard. She had to decide between letting go of her handpiece for the grappling hook or detaching it from the ledge. She chose the latter. 

She landed on the ground, hard. The air was knocked out from her, but she pushed herself to her feet almost immediately. As she turned around he was close. Way too close. She was still close to the ground so she used that to her advantage and swung her legs out to sweep him off his feet. 

It didn't exactly work out the way she'd planned. His legs were so hard and sturdy, that even wearing armor she couldn't topple him, and damn that hurt her own shins no matter how much advanced polymers and metal were between them. 

He reached down to grab her. His height was working against him there. With her on the floor he couldn't get her fast enough. She rolled out of the way, and shot her grappling hook at the nearest available wall. 

It took her out of his range, and she wasn't sure if it was her own adrenaline or Epsilon's panic pumping through her system at this point. 

_Maybe you shouldn't have dropped the gun,_ Epsilon pointed out. He might've had a point, it was absolutely out of her range now, but it hadn't been effective anyway. 

She'd rolled up the grappling hook's wire far enough that she was dangling off the wall out of his reach. It looked almost comical how he tried to jump up to reach her. It also looked like his range of jumping was surprisingly limited. He really didn't reach that much higher jumping than standing. 

"Speed boost", she instructed, planting both her feet against the wall. Epsilon obliged and she pushed off of it, releasing her hook at the same time. She came thundering down at Sharkface like a rocket, and managed to flip fast enough in midair that she hit his chest with her feet. 

He went down, maybe because of her momentum, or maybe out of surprise, but Carolina used the moment she was perched on his shoulders to wrap part of the wire of the grappling hook around his neck. She pressed the release and let the hook attach to the nearest available surface. 

Maybe there was surprise on Sharkface's features, she wasn't sure, she didn't really know how alien facial expressions worked, but it was gone an instant later. Along with his entire head. 

Carolina retracted the grappling hook and tried to ignore the gory sound it made as the cable, now covered in blood and whatever others parts belonged to an alien neck slipped back into its container. 

"Was _that_ really necessary?", Church asked as they both stared at the decapitated body going down. 

"It got the job done, didn't it?", Carolina asked. 

"Well, yeah. But did it have to be this gory? I mean… maybe I should talk to Doc, get into this whole pacifism thing, that sound a lot nicer than this crap." 

"As if you could handle talking to Doc for more than a minute", Carolina said with a snort. She turned away to walk back to the rest of their troops. One down, 62 to go. That was, of course, unless Wash and the others had dispatched some more of them already. They probably had. They were good at that kind of thing, no matter how unorthodox their methods sometimes. 

"Uh C, you might wanna turn back around", Epsilon warned. 

Carolina had no idea what that could be about, but she trusted Church. A moment later she was glad she'd followed his advice. Well, not glad, really. But it was better to see this than be surprised by it later. 

"He's pulling a fucking Lopez!", Church screeched. Carolina really didn't know how to comment on that. 

Sharkface's decapitated body was walking along as if it wasn't a particular issue, and calmly bent down, took his head in its hands and then put it onto its neck. He moved his neck from side to side like Tex had liked to do. There were cracking sounds as he did it and she wasn't too sure she wanted to know where they were coming from.

 "Holy fuck!", Church commented. He wasn't wrong. And Carolina had to admit she was at a loss as to how to deal with this. Not that she didn't know plenty of ways of eliminating an enemy it was just that… if decapitation failed, she honestly wasn't sure what else in her arsenal would pack more of a punch. 

Sharkface cracked his knuckles as he advanced, and Epsilon threw up the bubble shield even though he wasn't close enough yet to be that much of a concern. Good thinking, though, because Carolina needed another moment of staring in disbelief. 

"Any ideas?", she asked. 

"I don't know, don't we have any more buildings to drop on him? Or nukes? Or both, how about that?"

"Didn't help last time, either." 

"This is Agent Washington to all Chorus troops", Wash's voice filled her helmet. "I'm ordering an immediate retreat, all units get to the nearest pelican immediately." 

He had a point. 

"Epsilon?" 

"Yeah?" 

"Let's get the hell out of here." 

 


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Easter, lovely readers! Hope you all had lots of chocolate! Big thanks to FanficNinja, TheGreatElisaMousy, isurani, Yin and RiaTheDreamer for your lovely comments!

The Pelican ride back to base had mostly been silent. Well, if you counted the litany of courses coming from Epsilon as silent, but that was such a familiar bit of background noise at this point that it barely counted at all. 

But as soon as the Pelican doors opened, it got noisy as all hell. Mostly courtesy of Kimball storming into the hanger as they were disembarking. 

"What the hell happened?", she demanded. 

"Well…", Wash started. "It kind of looks like…" Tucker wasn't sure if the Freelancers was stalling because he didn't want to tell Kimball the news, or because he didn't really believe it yet himself. If Tucker was the one speaking it definitely would've been a mix of the two. 

"Our enemies are fucking immortal, that's what", Church cut in. "Fucking beautiful." 

"Well we don't really know that they're immortal", Simmons pointed out. "I mean they're unkillable, but maybe they can still die of old age. I don't think we can know at this point." 

"Remember, I always said this was a Vampire thing", Donut reminded everyone. 

"It's not a vampire thing if you decapitate someone and they put their head back on their neck", Grif said. 

"Hm, I guess you're right. In Twilight that's how you kill them… Oh, maybe that's the problem, though!", Donut announced. "In Twilight you have to decapitate them and tear them to pieces and set the pieces on fire. So maybe we just didn't follow through enough." 

"Yeah buddy you wanna go back and decapitate Sharkface again to tear him into tiny pieces and torch him, be my guest", Church huffed. 

"Oh, can I be your guest, too? We could have a slumber party, I just have to get Freckles' comfort blanky", Caboose said. 

"Oh, and we could paint each others nails, and gossip… Sounds amazing, I'm in charge of wine!", Donut agreed enthusiastically. 

"Everyone, focus. Agent Washington, report", Kimball ordered, getting the conversation back on track. 

"It's pretty much like they said, sir. We wounded several of them fatally, including one decapitation, and they just shook it off like it was nothing. Considering that, I decided there was no way we could hold the position without loosing our own soon enough. We were outnumbered and our advantage in armaments wouldn't have held out long against enemies that can't die." 

Kimball gave a long sigh. "You made the right decision, Agent Washington", she agreed. "I would've done the same thing in your position. Were they any casualties?" 

"Several injuries, none of them severe. We got out in time", Wash reassured her. 

"Yes, and now we're fucked", Simmons added. Not terribly reassuringly. But it wasn't like he was wrong. 

"Sorry I'm late!", Doctor Grey said. "I was busy studying some alien pee." 

"Well, to catch you up, it looks like the guys who got resurrected as aliens are unkillable", Donut said helpfully. 

"Well that's very interesting", Doctor Grey said, perking up immediately. "And concerning, I suppose. How did you find out?" 

"Agent Carolina made one their heads come off and he put it back on", Caboose explained. "Which is very understandable, I keep my head on my neck at all times. My mom always said I'm so forgetful I'd loose my head if it weren't attached to my head. But luckily it is! So, I always know where to find it. Thanks mom." 

"Yeah, so… what do we do about this?", Simmons asked.

"Well it's evident that whatever Santa did at Tucker's request is somehow responsible for this. So we should ask him about it", Doctor Grey suggested. 

 

* * *

 

Asking Santa kinda made Tucker wish he hadn't. 

"The invulnerability cannot be undone. At least, not on its own." 

"And what does that mean, exactly?", Wash asked. Tucker was happy that Wash and Caboose were the ones who'd volunteered to join him on this expedition. That meant he didn't have to be subjected to Kimball's judging stare of doom for a while. It also meant he had the chance to disappoint the one person whose opinion of him he cared about. Not exactly a win win situation. 

"The process was meant to avoid an extinction level event. Beings revived in this manner would remain invulnerable until the process is reversed, at which point they go back to their previous state." 

"Which was dead", Caboose helpfully explained. At least that's probably how he saw it, in case the two people who were vastly smarter than him didn't get it. Tucker had gotten it immediately, and he really wished he hadn't. 

"Precisely", Santa agreed. "The purpose was to allow the dead another chance to populate the planet. This method was meant to be used in conjunction with the temple of procreation." 

"So… the point is to raise a bunch of zombies, make them bang and then go back to being dead?" Church asked, projecting from Tucker's armor. He'd insisted on coming with them, but Kimball had insisted on Carolina staying at the base for protection, so now Tucker had the advantage of someone else judging him from inside his own head. Not that he needed the support for that.

"Precisely." 

“Bow chicka bow-wow!” said Tucker.

"Fucking beautiful", Church complained. 

"So, if I get this right, you could deactivate the effect, but then all the people who we wanted to return to life would be dead, but also all of our enemies who came back." 

"That is correct." 

"Well that is not good", Caboose observed astutely. "Santa can you just take it back for the kids on the naughty list and keep the nice ones?" 

"I do not understand the inquiry. Can you explain the meaning of 'naughty list'?"

"What Caboose is trying to ask, is there any way to deactivate the effect in a targeted manner?", Wash translated. "Could it be done that the Charon troops get removed from the effect while the Chorus troops who were targeted get spared?" 

"Hm." Santa paused. His projection pulsed for a moment. "I do think it's not impossible." 

"Really? Sweet, see I didn't actually fuck it up, we can still fix this!", Tucker cheered. Suddenly he was feeling a whole lot better about his choices. 

"But the calculations necessary for such an intervention are extensive", Santa interjected. "It would take at the very least several of the time measurements you call 'weeks' to complete." 

Well, fuck. 

 

* * *

 

Tucker's armor was on too tight. He'd had it for years and it was flexible and it wasn't like he'd gained a lot of weight in the last thirty minutes, but dammit it was just suffocating him now. It was on way too tight. And the door he was walking towards seemed like an insurmountable obstacle. It was just the regular meeting room door, he'd been through it a billion times. It was automatic for fucks sake. 

And it did open automatically as Blue Team approached. Tucker really fervently wished it had stayed shut. 

All eyes turned around to look at them. Most of them weren't wearing helmets, so he could see the accusatory glances the hopeful ones, the guarded ones… 

He really really wanted to turn tail and run right back out. That sounded like the most appealing idea of all time. 

Oh and they were all apparently waiting for him to say something and he really didn't want to be the someone to break this particular news. Even if it as all his fault. 

Especially because it was all his fault. 

"We're fucked", Epsilon announced in true Church diplomacy.

"Well that's a tad vague", Doctor Grey responded, sounding as cheerful as ever. "How, specifically, are we fucked?" 

"Basically, if we want to get rid of the bad guys then we need to undo what Tucker did." 

Simmons, who'd been so flustered earlier when Grif had held his hand immediately went to grab it. It looked almost instinctive. "All of it?", he asked. 

"Yeah basically. There's no way to un-immortalize them, other than making them go back to being dead", Church explained. _What, are you the narrator now?_ Damn he was glad for his friend's penchant for exposition now, because he really didn't want to be the one to explain this. 

"Okay, but just those guys right? I mean that's fine then, they can go back to being dead", Donut said. 

"Yeah… Santa said the naughty list takes time", Caboose said in a sad tone. Tucker really hated hearing that tone. Didn't help with the whole his armor feeling too tight issue.

"What?", Carolina asked. 

"What he means is that only reversing the effects of the resurrection method on the space pirates and not our troops would take close to a month", Washington translated.

There was a moment of quiet, as everyone absorbed that new information. 

"We can't last a month", Grif said. Somehow hearing _him_ say it made Tucker feel even worse about the whole thing. 

But he was right. With an enemy that couldn't be killed it was only a matter of time until the people who could die would die. It didn't matter if they had better armor and alien weaponry, it was just a fact. 

"So… uh, that would mean…" Donut trailed off, looking at Grif. There were already tears forming in the pink soldier's eyes and Tucker really really wished he hadn't noticed them. 

"No", Simmons declared. "We can't. We just gotta hold out for a month, maybe we can make some spreadsheets, make it easier for Santa to identify, then it would be faster." 

"Of course spreadsheets are your solution", Grif huffed, but it sounded flat.

"Doctor Grey, do you think you can figure out a way to reverse this invulnerability?", Kimball asked. Doctor Grey had her lips pressed together and moved them to the side in thought. 

"It's… too early to say. I took scans and samples of the people who were resurrected, but I don't have any conclusions yet. I don't even know how they died, let alone how they came back to life or why they can't be killed and as long as I don't have these answers I don't have any idea how to do it." 

"How quickly do you think you could figure it out?" 

"Again, I can’t really say. Might be quick and easy in a few days, might be impossible." 

"You're a genius, I'm sure you can do it", Simmons said in the same tone he used for sucking up to Sarge. Like he wanted to be completely supportive and enthusiastic about something without actually believing in it. 

"Being a genius doesn't mean I can do everything, it's just that I have a better shot at it than most people", Doctor Grey explained.

"So we can't count on that solution", Kimball summarized. 

"Well you gotta at least let her try before you dismiss the possibility", Simmons pleaded. "We can't really make any rash decisions on this, right? I mean we managed to fight them off at the communication tower, we just gotta buy some time." 

"We didn't manage to fight them off", Church said. "We tried, and had to retreat because those fuckers didn't have the common courtesy of staying dead." He looked around the room for a moment. "No offense", he added, looking at Grif, who just shrugged. 

"Then what? What are you saying?", Simmons challenged. 

"We might not have much of a choice", Wash said levelly. Matter of fact, no nonsense. Like they weren't already screaming inside about this. 

"Say. It." Simmons urged again. He'd gotten up and stopped holding Grif's hand, taking to stalking closer to whoever was speaking, which happened to be Wash. 

Wash looked like he was going to reply, but stayed silent. 

"We have to undo the entire resurrection if we want any chance of making it out of this alive", Kimball said. Resolute and strong, even though it couldn't be any easier for her to say it than any of them. Tucker was suddenly glad he'd never played poker against her, she would've cleared him out.

"But…" Donut said, lower lip wobbling. He looked over at Grif, whose face was frozen in an unreadable expression. 

"Well that doesn't sound like we should do that, no", Caboose said. 

"No. Absolutely not. We just got them back, you seriously want to murder them again?", Simmons yelled. 

"Murder isn't exactly the correct word…" Doctor Grey commented. In a whole lot less cheerful tone than just a few minutes ago. 

"Isn't it? We're taking people and killing them. Just because it's an alien AI that's doing it doesn't mean that it isn't the exact same thing!" 

"Captain, Simmons, I'm not happy with the situation either, and if there were an alternative, I'd be clamoring for it as well, but we can't let the rest of our people die for the sake of people who were already dead", Kimball leveled. 

"Yeah but they didn't die because it was their time or some bullshit like that, they died because Wash and Carolina fucked up the plan. Why do they have to pay for that mistake, huh?" Wash flinched at the mention, visible even through the helmet. Carolina who wasn't wearing a helmet was a little more subtle in her reaction, but something in her eyes reminded Tucker of cold steel all of a sudden. 

"Dude, just…", Grif said, making a vague gesture. 

"No! They're talking about killing you, and I just got you back and I'm not letting that happen!" 

"Captain Simmons, that's enough", Kimball reprimanded. It was the kind of authoritative tone that would usually make Simmons squeak and agree to anything that was being said, but he was more enraged than Tucker had ever seen him, and just kept going. 

"Bullshit it's enough!", he yelled. "It's enough when you see reason and stop talking about killing your own people!" 

"If we wait for the enemy to slaughter us that's suicide. I understand you don't like this solution, neither do I, but we don't have better options. I'm not going to sit around and hope that they don't attack us, because I know Felix, and I know Locus and they're not just going to conveniently wait a month so that we can get rid of them all nice and quiet." 

She turned towards Tucker and he really really didn't like that attention focussed on him. 

"Captain Tucker, I hereby order you to go to Santa and reverse the resurrection method you used." 

"W-What?", Tucker sputtered. "Why me? Just because I activated it, come on I had no idea that was going to happen like this!" 

"Yes, partially it's because you were the one who activated it, but also because it presumably require the use of your sword to undo. I'm doing this out of practicality, not just to punish you." 

"Oh… right." For once in his life Tucker really wished he had just left that sword lying in the hole he found it in. 

"Tucker, don't do it!", Simmons urged, now focusing all his efforts on him, and it was not fun. 

"I…", Tucker started, without knowing where that sentence was going to go. He would've loved to tell Simmons _of course I won't, Grif is my friend._ But it wasn't like everyone else standing there weren't his friend and he couldn't justify risking all their lives just to save a few people to himself. He did his absolute best to avoid looking in Grif's direction.

"What? You wanna do it, because it's finally your chance to kill a Red once and for all?", Simmons accused. 

Oh hell no. 

Where did he get off saying crap like that?

"What the fuck, dude? I haven't been believing in the 'Red vs Blue' crap…"

"Blue vs Red", Caboose corrected under his breath, but Tucker ignored him.

"… For years and you know it! I started this whole shit show because I wanted to bring him back, I don't want to kill him." 

"Okay then. Put your money where your mouth is and don't do it." 

He'd never really seen Simmons like this, and that was probably a good thing. He really wouldn't have wanted to face this version of him when they'd all still believed that they should be fighting one another. 

"I…" And just like that the power of indignation that had just animated him had left. He finally chanced a look at Grif again. He was looking at Simmons with a look that seemed somehow painful and resigned and Tucker felt like he was intruding on something private just by seeing it. 

"Fuck. You." Simmons spat out at Tucker's hesitation. His cheeks were flushed with anger, but his human eye was also a lot shinier and redder than usual. He looked at Tucker like he was lower than the dirt on the shoe of a shoe dirt eating bug that had stepped in a diarrhetic's dog's shit. He shot another look that was just as dirty at Kimball and then proceeded to storm out of the meeting room.

"…Fuck." Tucker breathed into the silence he'd left behind.

 


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry about yesterday, I meant to update, but then it was 23:30 and I still had twenty pages of my huge neurology book to read to stay on target studying wise, so I just couldn't do it. 
> 
> Also, sorry that this chapter is a bit short, but next week's chapter is a 7000 words smut scene, so... hopefully that's gonna make up for this. 
> 
> Big thanks goes to Aryashi, RiaTheDreamer, Fangrl, TheGreatElisaMousy, FanficNinja, AmateurScribes, Aenlu, Yin and AriRashkae for commenting.
> 
> Also, a warning: this chapter goes some dark places, mentally, it's nothing too explicit, just, those of you who might be sensitive to certain issues, tread carefully (check the newest tags I added, if you need to.).

Emily was a whirlwind as ever. They may have been in a different infirmary in a completely different base far from home, but some things just remained constant. The more things change, the more things stay the same. Doyle was half tempted to attribute that quote to Shakespeare again, but he was sure in this case that it wasn't right. He probably should get a bit more into literature, learn the origin of more inspirational quotes so that he could sound both inspiring and smart. 

If he figured out how to even hold books with these hands. If he managed not to bleed all over them, because the only thing he really wanted to do, had been wanting to do since he'd woken up, was scratch all of these scales off his skin, try to reveal the human underneath.

He'd seen enough of Emily's scans, even if he didn't properly understand the intricacies of them, to know that there was no human underneath. 

His fingers twitched, and he had to suppress the urge to scratch and check, anyway. 

He probably wouldn't be able to scratch through the scales anyway.

But god, how he wanted to. 

His perch on the medical cot was awkward. He didn't even know how to sit. How to move these massive deformed legs of his. Swallowing felt wrong. Talking felt wrong. Just the weight of his tongue in his mouth felt wrong. And none of the colors were right. But they weren't that wrong, just… off. Not enough to be an impairment. Not a real one, anyway, but he couldn't even look at things without being reminded of what he now was. 

Even breathing felt wrong. He didn't know how alien lungs worked, but air did go inside him and back out, but he wasn't sure how, or what it was doing there, where it went… 

The rhythm of his heartbeat wasn't right, either. Having a heartbeat at all was welcome, he didn't know how the circulatory system of the previous inhabitants of Chorus worked. But he'd never before been this aware of his resting heartbeat. It had never sounded and felt so wrong, but if you asked him, he would not be able to describe what the difference even was. 

There were muscles moving his face and he had no idea what he looked like when they did. He didn't know how to sit or stand or walk, but it all worked despite his ignorance. 

It felt utterly wrong. 

It was driving him mad. 

He did not presume to know what insanity felt like, but he imagined he was on his way to find out. 

"Emily", he started hesitantly. Maybe he shouldn't have said anything. Just say it's nothing, just let her do her work. It was very important that she find out everything she could. 

"Yes?" 

_Just say it's nothing._

"I don't think I can do this." 

"Oh the sperm sample? Don't worry about it, like I said, if you figure out how to get it, that would be neat-o, but if you don't, no big deal, I have plenty of other materials to work with, anyway." 

"No that's not what I mean." It was true, he hadn't yet figured out how to do that, but that wasn't even what he had an issue with. The request may have been strange, but that was who Emily was. Weird, outside the box and absolutely brilliant. Seeing her enthusiasm and her drive for discovery was one of the few things grounding him.

"Then what is it? Should we try to find you a better chair, again?" She looked around the infirmary. "I'm sure we can dig something up. The New Republic has surprisingly good equipment sometimes. Only half of it is broken! That’s fifty percent less than I expected." 

_Don't say anything. Just let her get you a chair and don't bother her._

She'd almost instantly welcomed him back like nothing was wrong. It was both better and worse than Kimball's categorical distrust broken up by moments of sincerity. Emily accepted him like he was. It was a great strength of hers that he could not match. He couldn't accept himself. 

"I don't think I can live like this." 

Seemed like he really didn't have his newfound body under control. The words tumbled out from him without his encouragement. And he could not take them back. Would not, even if he could, because now that the truth was hanging there, he'd rather let it be out there than eat into him silently. 

Emily had stopped doing whatever it was that she had been doing. It wasn't that he didn't care what she did, it was just that he had absolutely no hope of understanding it. She stepped close to the cot he was sitting on. He turned his head away, feeling the sinew in his neck move in a way he found absolutely repelling. 

"What makes you say that?", she asked in a voice so calm and quiet that it soothed his anxiety just the slightest bit. 

"I… I'm a monster", he said. All of the movements of his mouth felt wrong, and the fact that his voice came out perfectly normal, with his accent intact did not make it better. An alien should not talk like this. A mouth like this shouldn't make these noises, and someone who spoke like that shouldn't look like this. 

"Sangheili, or whichever other name this species goes by, aren't monsters. You know that", Emily said calmly. It didn't really sound like her, so soothing and collected, when usually she was so bubbly and loud. He'd heard stories of her talking suicidal patients off the metaphorical and sometimes literal bridge, and he imagined that this was how she'd done it. 

Too bad he wished there really were a bridge for him to jump off of. But given recent news that would not help him in the slightest. 

"No _they_ aren't. But _I am_ ", he explained. Part of him doubted he should even explain to her how he felt. It would not make her happy, and he didn't really want to burden his friend that way. But she was also his doctor, his confidante, and he needed whatever help she might be able to offer. 

  "You're not a monster", she said. The conviction in her voice was strong enough to make him want to believe her. But he couldn't, not really. 

"Yes, I am. Don't you see this? Everything about this is wrong." He gestured at his body awkwardly draped on the cot. "Everything I do feels wrong, I wish I could just climb out of this skin and into oblivion." 

"What you've been through was very traumatic. And these changes are drastic. But I believe in you. I believe that you can overcome this, and I'm here to support you in any way I can. Getting used to this won't be easy, but I do believe you can do it." 

"But I don't want to. Imagining myself a week from now, a year from now, like this? It's haunting me, I can barely stand the thought. Just looking at myself makes me want to throw up, but I don't even know how that works in this body. Nothing is right, and I can't… I just can't…" 

"Oh Donald…", Emily sighed. He finally turned to look at her and he almost wished he hadn't. It was so rare that her mask cracked, that the years showed up on her face. Her eyes were shinier than usual, and he took a moment to hate himself for doing that to her. But he needed her to hear it, to understand. 

"And living like this… forever? It's just…" Words were failing him, but he could tell from Emily's heavy gaze that she understood him perfectly. 

"We don't actually know anything about the duration of this effect yet. Or how your state might still change", she reminded him. She didn't sound too convinced of her own attempt at comfort.

"I know this is not something that one should easily request of a doctor, but…" He took a deep breath, and it burned him, transformed him, every breath a little bit further away from the human he should've been remembered as. "I was done. It was supposed to be over, and I can't claim that I was happy about it, or that I wasn't afraid, but… that was it, I was done. And I'd much rather go back to that state than stay like this." 

She looked at him with a look he'd never seen on her face before. She didn't interrupt him, didn't take the chance of his pause to interject. He was grateful for it. 

"When you do figure out how to reverse this immortality effect on our enemies… I want you… I need you to use it on me, as well." 

Emily let out a shaky breath.

"I don't know yet that I'll be able to do that…", she admitted. "It's… quite possible that I won't find anything before it needs to be undone indiscriminately, anyway. But if I do… at that point, you can ask me again, and I'll see what I can do. But you're very emotional right now, this is all very new, and I really want you to think about this carefully. Try getting used to it first. You might surprise yourself with how adaptable you are, Donald. You didn't think a former secretary could lead an army and you did an amazing job at it. Don't sell yourself short." 

"Thank you", he said. "Both for your misplaced faith in me and for considering my request." 

"My faith in you has never been misplaced, and it's not going to start now", she said, leaning in a little further. Her eyes were starting to look red, but she gave him a watery smile that he knew she meant with all her heart. "Trust me on this. I'm a genius, remember?" 

"That you are", he agreed, and he felt himself trying to smile despite himself. The weird muscles of his face made it feel off and out of place, but it wasn't as unsettling as all of the other sensations he'd been feeling that day. 

"Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to get back to my research", she said. She did her best to surreptitiously wipe away a stray tear, but he saw it anyway. He really admired her. Many poems got written about the men and women on the front lines, heroes carrying their banners to war, but if he had to pick the bravest person he knew, then he would pick this amazing woman who never held a rifle. 

And despite the dark nature of his request, having voiced it aloud made him feel lighter than he had all day. 

 


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Putting the bang in Big Bang... 
> 
> i'm sorry

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You know, initially I wasn't even setting out to make this shippy. I like big dramatic gen fics, exploring character relations without necessarily adding all the romance stuff...
> 
> And then this happened instead, I blame everything on the characters, this is not my fault. If anyone doesn't want to read smut, feel free to skip this chapter and join us again next week, skipping it won't affect your understanding of the plot. 
> 
> Everyone else, have fun with my inability of writing a smut scene in less than 6000 words.
> 
> Big thanks to TheGreatElisaMousy, Aryashi, AmateurScribes, FanficNinja, AriRashkae, Aenlu, a_taller_tale, Yin, Fangrl, RiaTheDreamer and Moriel for the feedback!

When there was a knock on Grif's door it took him a few seconds to figure out who it would be. Which, considering everything, was a bit embarrassing. Because really, who else would it be? 

The day had been such a roller coaster of things he'd barely had time to process anything. He could only hope he didn't have whiplash from all of that. 

Simmons didn't look good. Not that he was ever a beauty queen, but he was in his civvies which looked somehow disheveled, and his eyes and cheeks were red. The way he was sniffling also spoke of some excess snot. Looked like the angry outburst at the meeting had been followed by a whole lot of crying. 

Kimball had made an announcement after the meeting. She'd decided that they would let everyone know what was going to happen, in order to give them a chance to say goodbye, and have Tucker flip the switch sometime in the morning. Grif was really happy that he wasn't in Tucker's position. Not that he particularly liked being in his own position, but still. 

"It's not fair", Simmons said, his voice thick through the tears. 

"No." 

Simmons opened his mouth again, to say something else probably, but then he closed it again and shook his head. Grif really didn't know what to say. He wanted to diffuse the situation, but there wasn't really anything to say that would fix this. 

 _If this was your last day on Earth, how would you want to spend it?_ Stupid question, he hadn't been to Earth in over a decade. Cruel question, too, when you asked someone who was on a Base that had long since run out of Oreos. 

Simmons looked awkwardly off to the side, then looked back up at Grif and something changed in his look. There was a new determination on his face. Grif was about to ask that that meant, but before he had a chance to say anything, the cyborg launched himself forward and crashed their mouths together. 

Again, it wasn't the greatest possible kiss. 

Simmons' face was wet, and it was obvious that if he had done it before, it hadn't been many times. His lips moved weirdly against Grif's but that was something that he could work with. It had been a pretty long time since he'd last done something like this himself, so it wasn't like he should be hypercritical of Simmons' skills, here. 

He managed to stop Simmons from just pursing his lips against his, and coaxed his mouth open with his tongue. His tongue was first stopped by Simmons' teeth, but the nerd did manage to figure out what he was supposed to do here after a moment. 

When their tongues actually met it was tentative at first, and Grif had to take a moment to fully bask in the realization that this was him and Simmons sucking face. That they were actually making out, and it had only taken them way too many years to get to this point. 

Good job getting there now, at least, because soon they wouldn't have a chance to, anymore. 

But that was tomorrow, and as far as Grif was concerned it didn't really matter, not when there things to enjoy right now. 

Simmons was evidently still confused by the whole kissing thing. His tongue was starting to get into it, but Grif could tell that he had no idea where to put his hands, because in the span of less than a minute they had moved from Grif's face to his shoulders to Simmons own hip, one of them back to Grif's face… Grif decided he needed to take some initiative for once.

He grabbed Simmons hand from hie face and the other from Simmons hip and crowded him against the wall. He pinned both his hands next to Simmons head. Okay not quite as high up as might be ideal for sexiness points, but it wasn't his fault that Simmons was so tall. 

But it was totally working for Simmons evidently. He moaned into the kiss. Figured the kissass would have an authority kink, but Grif was determined not to examine that line of thinking any further, because authority figures… 

No. 

Focus. 

Simmons was starting to experiment with what to do with his tongue and Grif was pleased to learn that he was a quick study. What had started out messy and awkward was starting to get… well, not refined or anything, but definitely more fun. Given more practice Simmons could probably get really good at this… 

No. Don't think about that either. 

This was all about now. And now was getting pretty nice. Grif couldn't resist advancing a little, pressing Simons up agains the wall even more, and if he wasn't completely mistaken there were signs of Simmons' interest staring to rise. 

Grif grinned into the kiss. 

"What?", Simmons asked, sounding a little muffled, because they were still in the process of making out. Grif didn't deign it with an answer, but got a little more aggressive in his ravishing of Simmons' mouth. Okay ravishing might be overselling it, but he definitely shut Simmons up. And there was definitely another moan coming. 

Simmons was standing with his legs slightly apart and his knees slightly bent so that Grif could even reach his mouth, and he pressed himself right into that gap. It was a pretty damn fine place to be. Simmons was definitely heading down boner street. 

So was Grif, to be fair, but because his crotch was a little lower to the ground Simmons couldn't tell yet. So Grif would have to make sure to let him know. He angled his hips a little and let his clothed dick rub along Simmons upper thigh. 

Simmons froze at the sensation, and Grif was wondering if maybe he'd made a mistake. Simmons very clearly hadn't done this before, and maybe he wasn't ready to do anything more than making out, and proving to him that he had an erection might've freaked him out. 

But then Simmons took the initiative and spun them around so that Grif was now the one pressed against the wall. He really didn't mind the switch. Simmons was getting a little more bold, and while Grif was mostly content to keep up a languid pace in kissing, he could see the advantage of picking up a bit of speed. Simmons kept his hands with Grifs' first, but then he moved the human one down to rub along Grif's side exploringly. 

The Hawaiian was fine with that, and used the opportunity to tangle his now free hand in Simmons' hair. It was surprisingly soft considering the shitty quality of shampoo they had access to. It was also a bit wavy, now that Simmons had finally stopped keeping it in a regulation buzz cut, and that made it even more fun to run his fingers through it. Grif approved. 

Simmons human hand slipped under Grif's t-shirt and that was even better. It ran along his flabby stomach, and it didn't seem like Simmons minded that at all. Of course, he knew what he was getting into, he'd seen Grif before, but Grif couldn't remember Simmons ever touching his belly, and that kind of thing was a turn off for some people. 

From the needy little noises Simmons was starting to make it was evident that Simmons was not among them. Good. 

Grif decided he was going to return the favor and untangled his hand from Simmons' because he didn't want to move the other one from his hair. 

He slipped his own hand underneath Simmons shirt and felt along the lines of the metal, which wasn't as cold as it looked and traced the edge where puckered scar tissue met metal, where robot became human. It was mind blowing that Simmons had done this for him. Had Sarge do this to him just to save his life, when they'd been friends, sure but mostly just bitching at each other all the time. They probably could've figured this whole thing out way back then, and then they wouldn't have wasted that much time, but that didn't matter right now. 

They were slowly but surely moving from making out territory into dry humping land. Simmons was starting to rub himself on Grif, and that was fine, great, even, if not for the fact that with Grif's position and his height right now, he couldn't really get any friction for himself. 

Time to take some initiative again. He pushed away from the wall and Simmons complied with a minimal amount of stumbling. Grif steered them toward the bed without ever really breaking the contact of their mouths for more than a few seconds, which, honestly, was an achievement that he was pretty proud of. 

The backs of Simmons' knees hit the bed and he fell into a sitting position. Grif decided to use that opportunity to divest him of his T-shirt. He was again a little worried about moving too fast and spooking his skittish boyfriend.

Simmons looked up at him in awe as Grif pulled up his shirt, and it told him that he needn't have worried. So far, it looked like he was absolutely down with everything that was going on. Grif grinned at the starstruck face Simmons was making and pulled off his own shirt in one fell swoop. He let it fall behind him without any care, just like he'd dropped Simmons' on the floor next to the bed, and he attacked Simmons' mouth again, before he had a chance to complain about folding them properly or whatever. This was not the time for folding fucking laundry.

As Grif kissed him, Simmons fell down back onto the bed, and he just had to pause for a moment to appreciate the sight. Simmons red-faced and panting lying on his bed. Okay it wasn't the first time that Simmons had been in his bed, there had been plenty of opportunities when one of them (read: Grif) had fallen asleep on the wrong bunk and then subsequently the other one had to sleep on their bed, but that was nothing compared to this. 

Simmons was starting to look a little self conscious as Grif was looking at him, so he had to be quick before any insecurities came bubbling to the surface. He decided to remedy that by playing kisses underneath Simmons' jaw, slowly moving down the side of his neck and down to the collarbone. 

It coaxed a whole lot of noises out of him, and Grif did a little bit of testing before he found the spot that made him make the funniest squealing noise. He latched onto that spot and sucked and licked at it in quick succession. Simmons practically whimpered at that, and Grif had to really concentrate not to grin, because he didn't want to ruin his work. 

"Oh god", Simmons panted out as Grif finished placing the hickey. He gave the spot one last kiss before looking up at Simmons with a huge grin.

"Not god, Grif is fine. Or 'Captain Grif' if that's your thing." He gave a waggle of the eyebrows and Simmons blushed even deeper, which hadn't looked like it was possible. 

"Grif!", he admonished, and the squeaky tone was kind of cute. 

"Oh, you want me to go on? Sure, no problem", Grif said serenely, moving his way further down. 

Simmons reply was somewhere between "noyeahwhoaa" as he latched onto his nipple and sucked there. Sadly Simmons only had the one nipple thanks to the whole cyborg thing and part of his torso being made of metal, but that just meant this one got all the more attention. 

"How are you so good at this?", Simmons whined as Grif let up on the stimulation a little. 

"I'm not, you just lack comparison", Grif admitted easily. 

"I… I'm not, I've…", Simmons protested. Grif just rolled his eyes. 

"Doesn't matter", he mumbled and lowered his mouth back down to Simmons' skin. It really didn't. He was reasonably sure that Simmons was probably a virgin, but who really cared? Even if he had done it with someone before, he definitely hadn't done it with Grif, and that was what he cared about. 

He moved further down Simmons' stomach,  blowing some air on his happy trail, which seemed to be really working for him, judging by all the squirming.

Of course that brought him pretty close to a place that he hadn't really gotten close to before, and now that he was here, he did have to ask…

He looked up, a little uncertain. "Is this… how far do you wanna…?" 

"All the way", Simmons answered almost immediately. The subtext was heavy and Grif really wished he could ignore it, but he really couldn't. _Because it's probably the only chance._

"Okay", he said simply, and started fumbling with Simmons' belt. 

"Oh", Simmons said, and his hands flew down to assist. He seemed almost frantic as he opened the belt and popped the button, pushing his pants and boxers down in one movement. His dick sprung up from tis confinement and Simmons blushed pretty dark again. "Uh…" he said, not that it mattered. Grif rolled his eyes with a chuckle. 

"Scoot up", he instructed. Addressing the matter that while Simmons had been lying on his back with his legs dangling off, while Grif had taken to kneeling on the floor the further he'd gotten down. 

"Oh, right", Simmons said, and pushed his pants all the way off as he sat up and then scooted all the way up the bed. 

Grif took the opportunity to divest himself of the rest of his own clothes, and then noticed that Simmons was still wearing socks. Grif sat down at the edge of the bed and made a show of slowly and meticulously pulling them off Simmons' feet. 

Simmons, meanwhile, was looking at Grif's dick with something like intimidation. Which wasn't really something Grif was used to, because his dick was pretty average. Not that long, not super wide, either, just your garden variety penis, really. 

Simmons dick also wasn't the thing they glorified in porn mags, but it was a respectable length, framed by a batch of red curls, and curving just the tiniest bit to the left. 

Grif decided to introduce himself to it by blowing. Not blowing it, but blowing some air over it that ruffled the red curls and made Simmons make a delightful noise again. 

"You're so far away", Simmons complained. "Come here." 

Grif had no problem with that request and crawled up the bed to arrive back up there with Simmons, who latched his lips onto his immediately. They were really starting to get the hang of this. Especially when Simmons human hand hovered near Grif's dick.

"That's… okay, right?", Simmons asked awkwardly. 

"Sure, go wild", Grif said. There was a short moment where he doubted the wisdom of saying that phrase specifically to someone with a big metal robot arm, but he needn't have worried. Simmons grip on his dick was pretty tentative, more feeling the shape than really doing anything there, but Grif was pretty happy with that, already. After everything he'd never really assumed they'd ever get to this point, and having their first kiss and this whole thing happening all in the same day was pretty damn sweet. 

Simmons' grip was getting a little tighter, and he was starting to move his hand up and down a bit. Looked like he hadn't really figured out the right grip when doing this on someone else rather than himself, but Grif was not complaining. 

Rather, he was taking the opportunity to return the favor. He snaked his hand around to get it between them and then gripped Simmons cock in return. Simmons let out a startled gasp, and then gave a drawn out moan as Grif started moving his hand. 

Looked like he was letting himself get inspired by that, too. After a few stroked Simmons was matching his pace, and this was better than any other handjob he'd ever received. Not that the technique was all that great on either of their parts, but the fact that they were Grif and Simmons and they were doing this made it so much better. None of the other people he'd ever done this with could compare.

Simmons was moaning and squirming against him, and Grif had a feeling that meant he was as into this as he was. Which just made it all even better. 

But it also caused a tiny bit of a problem, that wasn't really a problem, but Simmons had mentioned wanting to go all the way, and Grif knew that if they kept this up they could probably both cum just from this. 

"So…", Grif started. 

Simmons looked at his face, his eye sort of unfocussed, and Grif had to stop himself from snorting at the sight. "Huh?" 

"How do you wanna do this, like…" Grif wanted to gesture with his free hand, but they'd sort of turned to face each other and he was lying on it, so he gave a vague head motion that hopefully got his point across. 

A crease of confusion appeared on Simmons' forehead, so it had apparently not gotten his point across all that clearly. Grif was just about to clarify when Simmons' face lit up in understanding. "Oh. Right." He cleared his throat. "Take me." 

Grif blinked. 

Blinked again. 

And then burst out laughing. " _Take  me_? Oh my god, Simmons, where the hell did you get that from? Did you steal Donut's shitty romance novels?"

He looked really affronted, and blushing bright red, again, but Grif really for the life of him couldn't stop giggling, even had he wanted to. 

"Well, I thought it was romantic", Simmons defended, a pout on his lips. 

"Not really in this century, buddy. Or any of the last three hundred, I think." 

"Fine, how am I supposed to say it, then? Teach me the proper terminology oh wise one", Simmons huffed, crossing his arms. Which wasn't great, because that meant his hand wasn't on Grif's dick anymore, but it was probably better that way if he didn't want to blow his load before he could 'take' Simmons. 

"Well, what I was asking is if you wanted to top or bottom, and if I got what you were saying right, you want to bottom, right?", Grif summarized. 

"Oh. So, uh, if I bottom that means you put your… in my…", Simmons gestured vaguely to the areas in question. 

"Yeah, pretty much", Grif said. "If you want to do it the other way around, that's cool though, no pressure. Or we can just keep going like this, or I could blow you, whatever you like." 

"No no, that's what I want", Simmons said. "If it were the other way around, then I wouldn't really know that well what to do so… and I do want to have _real_ sex." 

"Dude, hand jobs and blow jobs are also 'real' sex, but sure, whatever you like." Grif said it in a laid back lazy tone, like he was mostly indifferent to the outcome of this discussion, and he was, to a point. Even just a mutual hand job with Simmons would count as pretty great in his book, considering they hadn't done anything like this before, but the way Simmons was proposing… He'd be lying if he said he hadn't imagined that exact scenario a thousand times in the showers before. 

Okay, he'd usually imagined it with a little less imminent death, but what have you? 

"No, I want…" Simmons did some vague gestures with his hands again, but Grif knew what he was talking about, even if none of that flailing actually meant anything. 

"Okay, then", Grif said, and turned around to rummage through his night stand drawer. The lube he dug up wasn't exactly the newest, but it would probably still do its job of making stuff slimy just fine. He also dug up a condom, and the fact that he had those when he hadn't actually needed one in years as testament to how thoughtful Donut was, because he had a habit of hiding condoms in convenient places all over the base. At least Grif assumed it was Donut, and he'd rather never know if it wasn't. 

"Okay so now you just…?", Simmons asked, looking down at Grif's dick with some trepidation. Looked like Simmons really didn't have much of an idea what he was getting himself into, if he thought Grif would just ram his dick into Simmons butt hole all willy nilly. 

"Now I prepare you", Grif said. 

"What, like there's gonna be a test? I didn't study!" Grif rolled his eyes at that, and scooted down lower. He coaxed Simmons unto his back and managed to dig up a spare pillow from under the bed that he put under Simmons' hips. He made Simmons spread his legs, and Simmons propped himself up on his elbows, looking curiously at what Grif was doing. 

Grif situated himself between the open legs and took a moment to appreciate the view. Then he grabbed Simmons' dick again and gave it a few strokes, because it had lost a bit of its hardness during the discussion.

And then he licked the inside of Simmons' thigh, which made him flinch. Grif waited a moment until Simmons had calmed down and kept a firm grip on the leg before trying again. 

"What are you doing?", Simmons asked as Grif slowly moved his ministrations upward. 

"You'll figure it out", Grif said, between slow licks and kisses closer and closer to his goal. Simmons squirmed a little, but seemed mostly content to let him do his thing for a moment. 

"Ohmygod", he said in a breathy tone as Grif arrived to lick his perineum. There was a flump noise as Simmons' back dropped back onto the mattress when his elbows gave out. Grif grinned to himself. He counted that as a success. 

And finally he'd gotten where he wanted to go. He vaguely hoped that Simmons had showered before this whole thing but he smelled clean enough, and Grif was sort of already committed.  So he licked at the folds around Simmons butt hole. He had to push the cheeks apart a bit, but he had such a bony butt that it wasn't much work at all. 

"Wait really? You're gonna put your mouth there? That's where the shit comes out!" 

"No shit", Grif said, mentally congratulating himself for the pun. "It's fine, just enjoy." 

"Enjoy, why would that be enjoy—oooh." 

Grif lapped at the puckered skin and when he pushed his tongue in there wasn't mush resistance. Yet, his tongue was obviously not the biggest thing that was supposed to go there. He also couldn't reach very far in, but lapping around seemed to be doing a pretty good job at getting Simmons to relax, as most of the words that were coming out of his mouth were somewhat incoherent. 

He kept his mouth working while he popped open the cap on the lube. It wasn't that easy to get the lube onto his fingers when he couldn't look at it, but he managed it. A little bit spilt down, but as long as he got enough for what he needed to get done, he was fine with it. 

He wiggled a lubed up finger up next to where his tongue was, and then pulled the tongue away, because he didn't really like the taste of lube. Not that he was the greatest fan of the taste of butthole, but it hadn't really been that bad. 

The finger didn't meet resistance, and he was able to reach much further in than with the tongue. But not quite to the spot he wanted to reach, yet. Stupid tall people, with their hard to reach prostates and too long rectums. 

Well he'd get to it soon enough. He left the finger in as he crawled back up to check how Simmons was doing. 

Looked like he was doing pretty well, judging from the slightly open mouth and unfocussed gaze. It took a moment for him to realize Grif was back next to him, but he looked pretty delighted at the prospect, which was nice. 

Grif decided to chance a kiss, and leaned forward, giving Simmons ample opportunity to draw himself away should he want to. He didn't avoid him, though, even came forward a little to meet his lips, so that was a plus. There was some languid kissing, which wasn't all that easy to do considering how far Grif had to stretch his arm, to keep his finger inside Simmons wile kissing him. 

"Is that what my butthole tastes like?", Simmons asked as they parted. 

"What did it taste like?"

"I don't know, not like much. I thought that would be much grosser, really", Simmons said with a thoughtful look. 

Grif decided he'd taken enough time with one finger, and slowly slid in the next one. That was a little harder to do, and as he breached the ring of muscle, Simmons tensed up. 

"Relax. It's just my finger, try not to clench", Grif instructed. Simmons looked a little uncomfortable, and he considered just pulling both of them out, but then he nodded and took a deep breath. 

He didn't immediately mange to relax, but Grif decided to make it easier on him by distracting him with some more kissing. That worked pretty well, and soon Grif was able to slide both of his fingers all the way in and start trying to stretch the hole more. He gently massaged the opening and he could feel it getting looser little by little. 

"So you're doing this to… what?" Simmons asked, looking less tense but still plenty weirded out. "Why aren't you going straight to the main event?" 

"To stretch. So that there's enough room. Trust me, just ramming my dick in there unprepared wouldn't be fun for anyone involved", Grif explained. Of course Simmons needed technical explanations and to do some overthinking. 

"Oh, yeah I guess that makes sense", Simmons agreed, like this was an interesting piece of trivia he'd just learned. But it looked like hearing and understanding that was good for him, because he was starting to be more pliant. It was probably the time where Grif could get to the third finger, but he decided against it, for now. 

He wanted to make sure that this was absolutely perfect for Simmons. He usually didn't have that kind of ambition, but dammit, this time it really counted, no matter how much he would've liked to just maintain his lazy persona. 

So he kept going with two fingers, massaging the opening and trying in vain to get to the prostate, because dammit, his fingers weren't super long. Hopefully it wasn't so high up that his dick wouldn't reach it, that would be a bummer. 

Simmons had stopped trying to prop himself up or to get a look at what Grif was doing. Not like he had a chance, anyway, unless he was a fucking contortionist, but it was nice to see him finally accepting that and going with the flow. Grif found the hickey again that was already looking pretty red and sucked on it some more, which made Simmons release some more incoherent noises. 

It was a good opportunity to get that third finger in, after all, and it was met with very little resistance, this time. Simmons gasped at the new intrusion, but he didn't clench, and Grif was quite proud of him for that. He murmured some praise into his skin, too muffled to be heard, and it was probably better that way. 

He kept working the hole open, and Simmons was sounding more and more needy. 

"How much longer do you need to do that? Seems like there's a lot of room, now. Which feels kind of weird, are you sure there's no poop spilling out?" 

"Not yet", Grif said. 

"What, you think it's gonna?" 

"Might. Probably won't though. No big deal if it does, though, don't worry about it." 

"Okay that sounds intensely gross", Simmons said. "Is it really sexy for you to stick your dick in there? There might be poop." 

Grif chuckled. "Yeah, I know, it's fine." 

He was probably right though, it was plenty loose by now, and it would probably work. He debated putting in a fourth just to make really really sure that it was wide enough, but then he'd practically be fisting Simmons and that wasn't really what he was going for. 

Still, he kept going a moment longer, pulling gently on all side of the hole to make it as wide as possible. 

Simmons made a whining noise as he removed his fingers, but then looked a whole lot more alert as Grif got up and opened up the condom wrapper. 

"Oh, is it…? Are you gonna…?" 

"That's the idea, but only if you're ready", Grif said, as he rolled the condom down his shaft. He'd been neglecting it so long it felt pretty sensitive touching it, now. He'd have to exercise the best of his self control if he didn't want to come as soon as he got in. Not that self control was his big strength in most areas, but this, right now, was important enough to put in his absolute best effort. 

"Yeah, yeah, sure, go ahead", Simmons said, and Grif had to grin at the eager tone. "Should I stay like this, or get on my hands and knees or something?"

"Like this is fine", Grif said. He liberally coated his dick in lube. The sensation of the cold lube directly on his dick wasn't exactly the most pleasant, but as he spread it with a few strokes it warmed up and the lubed up stroking felt pretty great. 

But enough of that.

Time for the 'main event' as Simmons put it.

He crawled up the bed again, right over Simmons and held himself up with one arm. He looked at Simmons, at the excitement and nervousness he was radiating, and had to stop himself from experiencing a lot of sappy emotions that weren't conducive to what was going on.

"Ready?", He asked again, just to confirm. Simmons nodded, and Grif could tell that his previous fears were quelled. He was still nervous, but he trusted him, and that was probably one of the best things Grif had achieved in his entire life. 

"Alright", he said, and nudged Simmons' legs a little further apart. He lowered himself to where he wanted to be and took his dick in one hand to guide himself in, keeping himself propped up with the other. He found the right spot easily and pushed in agonizingly slowly. 

Simmons opened up for him with minimal resistance, because he had been so thoroughly prepped. Grif probably could've gone a whole lot faster without causing discomfort, but he was determined to make this as perfect an experience as he could muster. 

He chanced a look at Simmons face, and he had his eyes closed, probably just feeling out this whole new sensation. 

It seemed to take forever until he finally bottomed out, but when his hipbones touched Simmons inner thigh he let out the breath he hadn't been aware of holding. 

"Ooooh…", Simmons breathed out. "That's… all, you're in now, all the way, right?" 

"Yeah, are you trying to say my dick is short, or…?"

"What? No! It's just… you're really all up in there, we're really… wow." 

Yeah, wow seemed to be about right. After years and years he was actually here. Inside Dick Simmons, feeling his walls squeezing down around him, and it was pretty damn phenomenal, he had to admit. 

"Tell me what you want", he prompted. Simmons looked into his eyes at that, and Grif wasn't sure if he'd ever seen him look that open and emotional. 

"Make love to me", Simmons whispered. Then he looked a bit self conscious at having said that, but Grif wasn't going to laugh at him this time. 

"Alright", he said, and finally started moving. 

He did his best to roll his hips slowly, and being slow was one of the few things he was actually good at. Pulled out slowly, went in just a slight bit faster, then out more slowly. When he was sheathed all the way in, he captured Simmons in another kiss, but then had to let his lips go again as he pulled out. 

He made slight adjustments to the angle every time he pushed back in, because he was determined to find that elusive prostate. 

It took him a few more tries, but finally there was a gasp followed by a long moan and then an "oh fuck, oh fuck, right there, do that again!" 

Grif was only too happy to oblige, managing a few more slow pulls across the spot. Simmons head fell back, and he lay there openmouthed. It was a sight to see. And then Simmons started to move his hips along and it got even better. It actually threw the rhythm off a little bit, but they managed to figure it out, and when they were moving together Grif was pretty confident he was hitting the prostate on every thrust, which was exactly he was going for. 

Simmons was getting more loud, and he kind of hoped there was some security camera somewhere recording this, even though he knew there wasn't. These sounds were a historic occasion, and they should've been documented. 

"Can you… uh… faster? A little?", Simmons asked in between moans, and Grif agreed that, yeah, they were probably getting there. 

Grif picked up the pace a little and lost some of his laser like focus. He'd been paying so much attention to how Simmons was sounding and what he was doing to Simmons that he hadn't really had time to appreciate what Simmons was doing to him. The pressure and the friction were fantastic and it was probably the best stimulation his dick had had in years. Probably ever. 

The bedsprings were starting to creak, and that made Grif notice that Simmons wasn't the only on making noises. His own moans sounded more like grunts, and weren't nearly as nice as his partner's but so far he hadn't complained, so it probably didn't matter that much. 

"Faster", Simmons ground out again, and with that their pace was moving more and more away from 'making love' and further into the 'fucking' category, but they'd probably earned that with how long they'd been going for. 

He resolutely didn't look anywhere near the alarm clock, because it probably hadn't been nearly as long as it was feeling right now. 

The bedsprings were getting louder and the slap of flesh on flesh was sounding obscene, and his room would probably smell intensely like fucking when they were done and all of these things were pretty damn great, if you asked him.

"Yes, yes, yes", Simmons was muttering and then, "Grif!" 

He couldn't remember anyone saying his name like that before, and damn if he didn't want more of it. Luckily he didn't even have to ask for it, because now Simmons was starting to say his name every few thrusts, no not saying, moaning and whining and hissing. 

In return, Grif was muttering things about Simmons that probably were unintelligible. Hopefully, because he was getting really sappy, there. "You look so fucking beautiful Simmons, you don't even know, you have no idea how this feels right now, this is amazing, you're amazing", and so on, over and over. 

This probably wasn't going to last much longer. He could feel his orgasm building, no matter how much he wanted to drag this out and slow it down, and judging from Simmons incoherent rambling and the noises coming from him, it wouldn't take much longer for him, either. 

He finally reached down a hand to touch Simmons' so far untouched dick and the reaction was a fucking _keening_. Grif gathered the precum with his thumb, and coated it over the head. It was a pretty impressive amount, but Grif didn't really have room to talk. If it were possible to check he was probably leaking like crazy inside that condom right now. 

"Oh yes yes yes don't stop!", Simmons encouraged as Grif stroked him. It really wouldn't take that much longer to get there, he guessed. So it was probably better for Grif to try and finish up himself soon, so that he didn't need to rub on Simmons' prostate much after he'd come. Not that he didn't want to hold out as long as possible, but it was only courteous to try and come first. 

So he did his best to keep up the rhythm of his thrusts and his stokes as he started letting go. Just letting it all wash over him without trying too much to control it anymore. And he was right, he was pretty much right there.

"Simmons, I'm gonna…" he announced, not that it was a big mystery, but it still felt like a good idea to issue some sort of warning. 

"Uh huh", Simmons said, nodding. It probably wouldn't take long for him anymore, either. The glazed over look in his eyes receded a little as he focussed on making eye contact with Grif. 

"Grif, I love you", he whispered, but he might as well have shouted it from the rooftops for how it hit Grif. He really hadn't been expecting that, and that was exactly the thing that sent him over the edge. 

He came with a gasp, and it was… almost spiritual. He felt like he was floating for a moment as the pleasure rolled over him, and it was doubtlessly one of the best orgasms he ever had. 

It took him a moment to uncross his eyes as he came down, and that was when he noticed that Simmons was spilling over his hand and his walls were squeezing Grif's dick like crazy. Luckily it was still caught enough in its own orgasm that it didn't hurt yet, and Grif stopped his thrusting, just riding out the wave while keeping his hand moving to milk Simmons of every last drop. 

When Simmons was finally done, and it felt like way longer than Grif's orgasm had taken, but maybe that was because his own had distorted his time a bit, he hadn't exactly been tracking it with a stopwatch or anything. 

For a moment, only their heavy breathing filled the room. Grif knew he should pull out, get a wash cloth or something and clean off Simmons stomach, but damn it really didn't feel like moving right away. His dick was still mostly hard, and Simmons hole was lose enough that he could just leave it lying there, enjoying the warmth and the afterglow. 

"Holy shit", Simmons said after a while. A minute, a few minutes, who could tell? Who cared? "We really just did that." 

"Yep." 

"We really had sex." 

"Sure did." 

"Your dick is still in my butt." 

"Yeah, sorry, should I…" 

"No no, stay", Simmons said. "It's… weird, but… good weird." 

"Mhm", Grif hummed in agreement. He really could fall asleep like that, but that probably wouldn't seem like as good an idea in the morning."Can you reach in the drawer?" 

"Wha… yeah", Simmons said, reaching over with surprising dexterity for someone who had a fat hawaiian dude collapsed on top of them. Almost as if he was psychic Simmons pulled out the packet of tissues and handed it to Grif. Grif used to to clumsily clean the cum away from Simmons stomach, and his own where he'd been hit. It wasn't the best cleaning, but at least it wouldn't dry between them. 

It took another moment before Grif finally pulled his softening dick out, and it made a pretty gross squelching sound. 

"Ugh", Simmons commented, but Grif didn't mind. It was kind of gross, but that was just the natural consequence of what they'd just done. He slipped the condom off and then threw it carelessly behind him somewhere. Seemed like Simmons hadn't seen that, because he would certainly complain otherwise. He crawled all the way up and snuggled up. "You're sweaty", Simmons said. 

"So are you." 

"Yeah, well…" 

The logical consequence would of course be getting up to take a shower but Grif absolutely wasn't in the mood to do that and from Simmons lack of movement he was apparently feeling the same way. 

Grif snuggled his sweaty self all he way up to his boyfriend (still a strange new concept) and managed to fish the covers from the side of the bed at the wall. Another victory for laziness, if he'd been one to make his bed in the morning this whole thing would've happened on top of the blankets and they'd be covered in jizz and lube, but as it was they were dry and relatively nice smelling. 

Simmons squirmed around a bit before he found a position that seemed comfortable, and Grif was delighted to find that he'd chosen the little spoon position for himself, so that Grif could just drape himself around him like an oversized starfish. 

He was already sort of drifting off to sleep when something important occurred to him. Simmons had said it in the heat of the moment, but it had almost certainly be genuine, and Grif felt the need to return the favor. Under different circumstances he might've danced around the issue and avoided talking about it at all, but he was going to go back to being dead tomorrow, this wasn't the time for bullshit. 

"Love you, too", he said into Simmons' shoulderblade. There was a sharp intake of breath, but then Simmons just settled back into his position cuddled up to Grif without saying anything, and that was reaction enough for him.

 


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And we're back to the sfw territory. Then again, who reads fanfic at work? 
> 
> Just as a heads up, I'll try to post next week's chapter on time, but if I don't, you can just assume it's because I'm freaking out over my final medical exam which is next week monday and wednesday. I'll be a doctor if I pass that... I'm already freaking out a bit... 
> 
> Anyway, big thanks to Aryashi, TheGreatElisaMousy, a_taller_tale, FanficNinja, Yin, graveExcitement (arachnids), AriRashkae, sea_pig and RiaTheDreamer for commenting, and also a big thanks to everyone who left kudos. It's pretty funny to me that this story cracked the 100 kudos on the smut chapter :) Thanks to everyone who helped get it there.

"Are you sure you put it on the right way?", Felix asked in a faux helpful tone. "Looks a bit lopsided to me."

"I put it on fine", Sharkface growled. He moved his head from side to side, cracking his neck. It was a disconcerting noise to hear.

"See that doesn't sound like it's all that healthy", Felix mused. "Maybe I should cut it off again, so you can figure out how to position it better." 

"Let's refrain from any more decapitation, please, gentlemen", the counselor said in his trademark toneless tone. 

"I don't know, I just don't buy that immortality story", Felix went on. "I really think we should test that. Aren't you a man of science, counsellor? Seems like the kind of thing you'd be interested in." 

The counselor gave a slight raise of one eyebrow at that, before he went back to scanning Sharkface's new body. 

Locus really rather would've been somewhere else. Not that he was going to leave or voice any discomfort, because he was a professional. There was no real rational reason to be agitated anyhow. He was surrounded by his allies in a remote spot without enemy activity. Keeping constantly on guard was prudent in any situation, of course, but the… discomfort he was feeling being in this room with these people was more than that. 

"We should test if it works on you, too", Sharkface said, tilting his head. 

"No, thanks", Felix said, unimpressed. "I'm too good looking to be a guinea pig. I'm sure we got some more ugly ass motherfuckers like you around." 

"Anything on your scans, counselor?", Locus asked, mostly to diffuse the situation between his two allies. Not that he really cared if they started slaughtering each other, but it might not be strategically advantageous to have them at each other's throats. 

"They're inconclusive", the man said, looking up from the scanner. It was strange seeing him with that scanner really doing something, when it had seemed before that he much preferred standing around with his hands behind his back, trying to worm his way into people's minds. 

"Do you even know what you're doing with that thing? I thought you're a shrink, not a real doctor", Felix scoffed. 

"I may hold a doctorate in psychology, but let me assure you, I am perfectly qualified to use these devices and make medical diagnoses. However, I am not an expert on alien physiology." 

"Fat lot of good this whole examination thing is doing us, then", Felix said. 

"You're welcome to carry out your own examinations if you doubt my expertise", Price offered. 

"No, he's not", Sharkface growled. 

"Oh, no, I don't think I wanna get up close and personal with the slimy alien. You freaks stick together", Felix said. Not that it really looked like Sharkface's new incarnation was actually slimy. Locus imagined those scales would be rather dry and rough, if his experience from the great war was anything to go by. 

The counselor shot a mildly affronted look at Felix. Mildly affronted was probably as close as that man ever got to full blown berserk rage. Not that Felix's description of the two as freaks was all that far off the mark. The counselor had remained mostly human in his resurrected state, but not completely. Parts of his skin had been replaced with scales that had adapted to his complexion so as not to be particularly noticeable, but that made the effect of seeing them all the more jarring. His hands looked pretty normal, too, at first glance, until one noticed that his hands only had four fingers, now, like the alien's. 

There was no comparison to Sharkface, though. The fact that he was entirely alien rather than just in parts made him look less weird than the counsellor, but it was also the reason that Locus was so on edge. 

Of course he knew that it was Sharkface, not actually an Elite, and he knew that the Great War was long since over. And that barring a confrontation between Felix and Sharkface over their mutual annoyance with one another, this was absolutely not a dangerous situation.

And yet… knowing something and convincing your instincts of it were two entirely different affairs. He remembered the last time he'd looked into a Sangheili's eyes, the last time one of their scaly hides had been within touching range, and all of those instances were things that haunted his nightmares to this day. Not that he didn't know how to suppress those thoughts, but he hadn't been face to face with one of these creatures since the war ended. 

All his instincts were screaming at him to shoot, to get to cover, to gut the creature before it had a chance to do the same to him as he'd seen its friends do countless times before. 

But it wasn't one of them. It was still Sharkface, a mercenary with a bad attitude and an unhealthy obsession for revenge. Maybe Sharkface had himself served in the Great War and fought against creatures like this. Locus had never cared to find out. 

Still, keeping his composure was a lot more challenging than he would've like to admit. 

He was wondering how Felix was so casual about this. Maybe that was why he was being so antagonistic. Of course Felix never really needed a reason to rile people up against him. Ironically, with the knife sticking from his eye socket, he was easily the most freaky looking of them all.

"It's still unclear how this works", Price admitted, finally finishing his scan. "I can see remodeling around the area of the cut, happening quite rapidly. Much faster than healing would occur in a human, or, I assume in a Sangheili. Of course, we also don't know how ‘Sharkface’ was converted into this new appearance at all. The mechanisms may be related." 

"Oh really? That's the fucking mental acuity they gave you a doctorate for, huh? Dude gets nuked, comes back as an alien abomination, gets his fucking head chopped off and walks away from that, and you think that _might_ be related?", Felix ranted. 

"The reconstruction of his body may have occurred in a manner similar to the repair that's occurring right now. The same might be true for the reconstruction of both of our bodies", the counselor said, unfazed by any of Felix's venom.

"Wow, amazing, I'm so glad we didn't just chuck you out of an airlock back at the Tartarus", Felix droned in a monotone that was probably meant to indicate sarcasm. 

"If you want more detailed answers, I'd suggest acquiring Doctor Emily Grey of the Federal army. As I understand it, she's an exobiologist and has access to more advanced scanning equipment than this", Price suggested. "I'm sure she'd be very helpful at sating your scientific curiosity." 

"Yeah, I don't really care that much. But hey, if we happen to be in that situation we could hold off on killing her for a bit when we kill the rest of these losers", Felix said with a shrug. "What I want to know from you is, do you think this whole getting your head cut off thing only works for Sharkface or also for the rest of the guys who got nuked? Or does it work for everyone who got reincarnated into the same shitty fucking life, here?" 

"Like I said, I'd be happy to help you figure it out", Sharkface reiterated, his mandibles flaring apart in a gesture that Locus had seen from aggressive Elites countless times in battle. It was probably meant for intimidation.

Locus really really wished it weren't working. 

"Since another one of the troops at the communication tower reported a supposedly fatal injury they walked away from, I believe it's reasonable to assume that it applies to everyone who was at Armonia after its destruction. I don't really see a reason why it would be limited to those people, but of course without…" 

BAM. 

Locus would never admit to jumping at the noise, but he really hadn't expected there to be a gunshot in the middle of the conversation. Price slumped forward with a hole in his forehead. Clearly a fatal shot especially from this distance. Felix holstered his pistol again and looked at Price with a posture that indicated mild curiosity. Sharkface didn't look too concerned, either, but then Locus wasn't completely sure he'd recognize concern on the man's alien visage. 

Nothing happened. 

"Good job", Sharkface sneered. He lifted one of his overly long alien fingers to poke at the counselor. "Still think we should've tried this on you." 

"I have some revenge plans to work through, I'm sure you're familiar with that", Felix said. "And the dear counselor doesn't really do much except talk, so I figured he wasn't a big loss, strategically." 

It wasn't like he was wrong. Trying this on someone as skilled and tactically valuable as Felix wasn't a sensible idea, but something about the dismissiveness was putting Locus on edge. It wasn't the first time he'd seen Felix act like this, so it shouldn't bother him, and yet… 

Plenty of people had called him a monster plenty of times, and it had never bothered him much, but now, sitting here with Sharkface turned alien abomination and Felix with the knife sticking from his eye… he was starting to wonder if he wasn't quite monster enough to be keeping this company. 

Price let out a burst of air through his nostrils before shaking his head and righting himself. "I do believe that was uncalled for", he said in that usual even tone of his. Like getting shot in the head had been a mild inconvenience to him.

Felix laughed. "Well, at least now we know. It was all for science, dear counselor. And your forehead is already growing together again, so no harm no foul." 

Price raised a hand to his forehead. "I wouldn't quite say that. But this _is_ valuable information, strategically." 

"I knew you'd see it that way", Felix said, with a friendly pat on Price's shoulder. The implication was clear, of course. To Locus at least. Either the counselor would agree, or he would find out how useful immortality was once you were chucked out of an airlock. 

"So this means most of our people are immortal?", Sharkface concluded.

"It would appear that way. That of course turns the loss of troops at the destruction of Armonia and at the crash of the Tartarus into a big advantage. While I'm sure the people of Chorus have some people affected by the same mechanic, the losses we suffered were undoubtedly greater, as is our current gain." 

"That's just perfect", Felix said. He actually clapped his hands together in delight. "They fucking thought they had us and now they're losing by winning. That's such poetic justice." 

Locus wasn't sure he'd agree on the definition of poetic justice in that case. Especially since few poems were written about the people who were trying to exterminate a bunch of mostly harmless colony dwellers. 

"So let's crush them", Sharkface said resolutely. 

"Yeah… but let's take a little time to wear them down, first", Felix said. "Let's not hit them all at once. We can send smaller squadrons with poor equipment, make them think they have a shot at beating us, and then just crush them."

"Fine by me", Sharkface said. 

Locus didn't agree, but he also didn't feel like participating in the conversation these two were having. _If you want to make your victim suffer, you do it quickly, and efficiently._

Felix hadn't listened to him then, he doubted any of them would listen to him, now.

 

* * *

 

Grif didn't wake up in nearly as good a mood as he'd gone to sleep in. 

He wasn't usually one for nightmares, but this night he'd managed to make his way through several disconnected one that all made their way back to the same issue. He'd dreamed of turning into a complete alien like what had happened to Doyle, except he couldn't speak like a human, either, just honking and blarging at people and no one understood him or even recognized who he was, and he'd spent his time desperately trying to get anyone to listen to him, even if they didn't understand what he was saying. 

When he'd woken up from that one it had been 2 am and Simmons had been snoring softly beside him, so he'd done his best to go back to sleep. It hadn't been all that successful, the next thing he'd dreamed about was his first posting. That wasn't something that was really new to his dreamscape. However rare his nightmares were, when he had one, there was probably a 70 percent chance that it was about waking up after having fallen asleep at his post and finding himself surrounded by a base full of corpses. And then of course going into the small colony town, trying to find help, only to discover everyone there dead, too. 

This time he'd had a slight variation on that dream, though, and it was a very unwelcome one. This time all the faces of his old squad had been replaced by his current squad, finding them all dead one after the other, and in between there had been unkillable zombie aliens walking around. He'd even met Felix with that fucking knife sticking out from his head, giving some cheesy supervillain speech that Grif couldn't remember now as the dream was thankfully fading from his mind. 

The dream had been disconcerting, sure, but the thing that really made him shiver under the tangle of blankets was the fact that it really wasn't far off from what might actually happen. 

The idea of Tucker flipping a switch and him dropping dead was fucking scary, he wasn't ashamed to admit that, but dammit, the dream was even scarier. He knew what it was like to be the last one standing, and it fucking sucked. Staying alive just to see the rest of his friends slaughtered… See Simmons dead… he couldn't do it. He just couldn't go through that again. 

After he'd realized that everyone on the planet was dead, he'd called the UNSC about it, gave a somewhat disjointed report and requested evac. They'd granted his request after they verified that there was really no one left, but the nearest transport had been a ways away and considering the Covenant activity in the area they needed a better equipped ship than that. 

The result of that was that he'd had to wait nearly three weeks on the planet before anyone could come and pick him up. The "helpful" UNSC representative on the radio transmission had suggested he spend his time putting the other people of the colony to rest. Which was just a nicer way of saying spend the next three weeks alone on a planet far away from home and dig graves for everyone there. 

And he'd done it, too. Because doing something with his hands had been a good distraction. Well not a good one, but the only one available. 

It hadn't been that many people at the colony, which was a small mercy. 83 civilians and 19 UNSC soldiers. Considering those numbers it was no wonder that the Covenant had had such an easy time overrunning them. They hadn't even had that great equipment. And the twentieth soldier hadn't even noticed anything was going on and had slept straight through the fighting. 

Those three weeks had been the most consistently work filled ones of his entire military 'career' and he really, really never wanted to go back to that. Not to working all day and sure as hell not to digging graves for a hundred people. 

He'd barely known most of the people on that colony. He hadn't been stationed there that long, and he had spent most of his time on the base, so the people were the only ones on the planet he'd really known the names of. 

He knew a lot of names on Chorus. He didn't want to be the one to write them on the grave markers. 

So he probably wasn't going to see another sunset. He was mostly okay with that. He hadn't really seen many sunsets recently anyway. Hanging out in caves for bases or in giant cities wasn't that conducive to watching the joys of nature, but that was fine, he didn't care that much, even if he appreciated the sky being turned orange. It was a good color. 

He looked at Simmons sleeping next to him. They had been surprisingly good at the whole sex thing, but they kinda sucked at the actually 'sleeping together' part. Their initial cuddling position had long since dissolved, Simmons was sprawled across the bunk in a way that shouldn't be possible for such a skinny dude and had one of Grif's legs pinned under him so that it had fallen asleep. The blankets were a tangled together mess and of course the sheets they were sleeping on were sticky and gross and also tangled into the whole mess of a sleeping arrangement. 

It was 4:56 am, not a time that Grif usually graced with consciousness, but he also knew that after these dreams he didn't want to risk falling asleep again and letting his mind create something even more fucked up. He knew it could.

So he began the process of untangling himself from the whole mess. Simmons murmured into the pillow that he'd also been drooling into when Grif got his leg out, but other than that didn't give any indication of waking up. When he'd finally gotten up he found the nearest clothes, which happened to be his sweatpants and T-shirt from the day before (he actually found Simmons' t-shirt first, but there was no way Grif could fit into that without ripping it) and put them on without bothering with underwear. 

He took some clean clothes from the drawer and made his way to the showers. 

The nice thing about going to shower this early was that there was no one else there and that meant the warm water supply was all his, but the bad thing was of course being awake at fucking five in the morning. Also, no matter how warm the water was, it still woke him up, and loosing that sleepy haze wasn't something that Grif enjoyed. He liked being sleepy and lazy and useless dammit. Not awake and filled with dread. 

After getting dressed and making his way to the mess hall, he discovered he wasn't the only one awake this early. Between this night and the last, he could probably become the new chairman of the Chorus insomniacs society, not that that was something he'd ever want associated with himself.  

"What are you doing awake?", he asked as he spotted Tucker nursing a coffee cup, looking morosely off into the world at one of the mess hall tables.

"Oh, Grif, uh…", Tucker said, looking a bit like a deer in the headlight. Grif plopped himself down at the same table. Breakfast started being served at 5:30. Grif only knew that because he made it a point to be aware of important food related times, not because he'd ever experienced it first hand. Well there was a first time for everything. 

And a last. 

"Dude, chill", he instructed Tucker and grabbed the Blue's coffee cup to steal a sip. "Whoa, how are you drinking that?" Grif understood how some people liked black coffee more than with milk or sweetened, but this right here was not what he would consider a regular black coffee. It was so strong that Grif had an honest moment of wondering if drinking an entire cup of this would just burn someone's palate away. 

"It was the only thing that was left", Tucker explained, looking at the cup in misery. "Maybe I'm punishing myself." 

"Well fuck that", Grif said, and took the cup. He got up and went to the coffee corner that already had new steaming pots of coffee standing around. He threw the content of Tucker's cup into the trash can and was honestly surprised there was no acidic hissing sound as it dissolved the rest of the trash can's contents. He got two new cups and poured them, making sure to put a good amount of milk in both of them. He also added a liberal helping of the awful artificial sweetener that was their only option, here. Better than nothing, but leagues worse than real sugar. 

He went back to the table where Tucker was staring morosely into space and slammed one of them down in front of him. He took a sip from his own cup and sat his heavy ass down. 

Tucker looked at the cup for a moment, unenthused. Then he looked up at Grif who'd provided it for him, and then guiltily took a sip. Gagged. 

"Oh my god, how much fucking sweetener did you put in this? What the fuck." 

"Guess this is your new punishment now, I'm not getting up again", Grif said, taking a sip from his own coffee which was perfectly fine. 

"Coffee with sugar is a travesty", Tucker complained. 

"Suit yourself", Grif said, making sure to enjoy his next sip extra hard. He even threw in a satisfied "Ah" as he put the cup down. 

Tucker looked like he was about to make another comment, but then he stopped himself and stared into his cup again. Great.

Grif could usually deal with awkward silences well enough. Talking could also be a form of work, so avoiding that was fine by him, but this time it was different. 

"Okay seriously, dude. This has got to stop." 

"What?" Tucker asked, looking down at the table again. And off to the side. Toward the coffee machines. Back down to the table. Anywhere but at Grif's face. 

"That!", Grif said with a gesture towards Tucker. 

"What, me?" 

"How do you even know where I pointed if you won't even look at me?" Grif could tell that Tucker was taking this whole thing hard. That he was feeling terrible about the whole situation and especially Grif's role in it. He should find some nice empathetic words to show Tucker he understood his predicament and didn't blame him for it. 

"Kinda rude to ignore a guy you're gonna kill later today." 

Yeah, Grif wasn't all about the subtlety and the empathy. 

Tucker looked up like he'd been shot and maybe it was Grif's imagination, it was hard to tell with his dark complexion, but it looked like all the blood had left his face. 

His mouth opened but then it kind of just stayed like that. Looked like for once, Tucker didn't have a quick witted answer to something. 

"Look, I get that this is all weird and all, but can we, like, not?", Grif asked. "It's way too fucking early, I haven't had my coffee yet, so let's not do this, alright?" 

Tucker didn't reply, just looked intensely uncomfortable and guilty again. Looked like they couldn't not, then. Maybe Grif should just sit down at a different table and enjoy his coffee in peace, but he didn't really want to do that. Might cause some other assholes to sit down with him, and that wasn't really how he wanted to spend his last morning, either. He'd rather spend his time with friends. 

Not that he and Tucker were really friends, but he'd be lying if he said he didn't consider the rest of the reds and blues and maybe even the fucking Freelancers as something like family by now. So, uncomfortable silence it was, then. 

He spent some more time nursing his coffee while Tucker kept sipping his, fidgeting from side to side like he was debating just running away. 

Okay fuck the silence. 

"Look, dude, for real, though, it's… it's fine. Okay, it's not really fine, but I get it", Grif said. He was being honest but saying it felt a little like signing his own death warrant. It wasn't fun. 

"Huh?", was Tucker's well thought out and reasoned answer. 

"Okay, I mean, obviously I'm not happy about this whole thing, but I'm not angry at you. You have to do this thing or get overrun by zombies, and I get it", Grif went on. Visions of digging graves all by himself came unbidden and he did his best to squash them down, to not imagine dragging Simmons to a hole in the dirt. 

"You…" Tucker threw his hands up over his head, "Argh. This just… sucks!", he said emphatically. 

"Yup." Breakfast wasn't even being served yet, talk about stuff sucking. 

"I don't want to do this", Tucker said. "But the whole thing is my fault, so I have to do it, but it just sucks so bad. I mean you and Simmons just got together and now I'm the one who who destroys that? I'm supposed to be the love doctor, this is all wrong." 

"Well, if you hadn't done your thing then we never would've gotten together at all, so that's something." 

"I guess." Tucker's gaze went back down to the table. "That's not that much better, though, is it? Simmons was pining after what could've been and then he actually got it and then it gets taken away again like a day later? Fucking hell." 

"Yeah." Not much else Grif could say to that. Just thinking of that made his stomach clench. If Tucker didn't sort out the whole zombie soldier thing, then Grif would be the one with the newly acquired dead boyfriend. If Tucker just flipped the switch, then he wouldn't be the one who'd have to deal with that, just unloading it all on Simmons instead. 

Maybe he was selfish for being more okay with that scenario. 

Or he was being a selfless hero for allowing his life to be sacrificed for the sake of everyone else. 

"This is not gonna end well for me and Simmons, no matter what happens", Grif argued. "And that sucks, but you still gotta pick the option that sucks less for more people." 

"What, the needs of the many and all that crap?" 

"Pretty much." Grif's coffee cup was empty by now, so he just decided to steal the rest of Tucker's since he hadn't been that enthused about it, anyway. 

"This fucking blows." 

"Yup." 

"I'm really not trying to murder you because you're a Red." 

"Yeah, I know. Simmons knows, too." 

 


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the long wait, I just wasn't in the right headspace to post anything earlier in the week, freaking out about my final exam. But now it's all good, I passed, I'm a doctor now! Also I'm not gonna make you guys wait too long for the next chapter, that should go up this Sunday to get back into the regular schedule. 
> 
> Big thanks to TheGreatElisaMousy, RisingFlames, ProxiCentauri, FanficNinja, Yin, RiaTheDreamer and AriRashkae for your lovely feedback!

 

None of their outposts had reported merc activity so far. It was the perfect opportunity for them to sneak out of the base and hopefully get to the alien temple uninterrupted. 

Not that Tucker was really hoping that they'd get there uninterrupted. Sure, that would be better for the mission's success, but no matter how many times he tried to go over in his head about how this was the only way, no matter how many people told him that it was the right thing to do, he didn't actually want the mission to succeed. 

It was probably best that Wash was coming with him, because otherwise he might've just holed himself up in his room and put a pillow over his head, wailing about how much he really didn't want to do this. 

He hadn't really talked to Wash about how he saw the whole thing, yet, but now, as they made their way through the base to what Kimball had promised was the least known path out of the caves, he didn't fell like starting to talk, either. 

Most everyone on base was pissed at Kimball for the whole thing, because she'd made the announcement and had thankfully not mentioned Tucker in it. So most people hadn't put two and two together to figure out that he was the one they should actually be pissed at. He simultaneously felt like correcting all of them on their hatred of Kimball and not saying a single peep because he wasn't sure if he could deal with all of that ire, himself. 

Like a true prophesied hero. 

God, he was so pathetic. And a screw up, too. 

Wash was leading the way, all broad shoulders and confidence even though Tucker was pretty sure that the Freelancer didn't want to do this just as much as he did. 

They were nearly at the exit of the cave when Wash stopped all of a sudden. 

"Private Matthews, what are you doing here? Shouldn't you be at your post? Gold Team is assigned to the West Entrance." 

Matthews was indeed standing there. He was fidgeting and looking down at the floor. Seemed like just having Wash ask a question was making him intensely uncomfortable. 

"Well, yes, I just… are you really going to make everyone dead again?" 

Oh, so he was one of the ones who'd managed to figure out that it was Tucker who had to do it. Wash's shoulders slumped at the question, while Tucker felt like his throat was only letting half the air through that it should. 

"Private Matthews…" Wash's tone had softened considerably, but there was a backbone of steel to it. "I'm very sorry, but we don't have any other choice. You're not going to be able to stop us." 

"I… I know", Matthews said. The way he was hugging himself he didn't look like he'd come here to fight them, anyway. "It's just… I don't know, can't you… is there really no other way?" 

"If there were, then we wouldn't be doing this", Wash assured. He put a hand on Matthews' shoulder. "This is not a decision that any of us made easily. I really am sorry." 

It was a good thing that Wash was doing the talking, because Tucker felt like he was going to throw up in his helmet at any moment. 

"But, you know… Captain Grif and Captain Simmons just got together, and Charles and Katie… it's just really not fair." 

"It isn't. But everyone else getting killed instead wouldn't be fair, either", Wash said. 

"I… I get that, I just wanted… I don't even know. I just thought maybe there was something I could do?" 

Wash let out a heavy sigh. "There isn't. Go back inside, spend time with your friends, that's probably the best thing you can do right now." 

Matthews sniffled. He was probably crying inside his helmet. His shoulders were quivering a bit, but it looked like he was actually doing his best to put on a brave face, he just wasn't very good at it. Tucker debated the merits of just stabbing himself with his sword instead of going on with the mission. 

"Okay", Matthews said, voice heavy with tears. "Sorry sirs." 

Wash nodded to him and then walked past him out of the cave. Tucker didn't say anything. He probably should, but he couldn't come up with anything for the life of him. 

He had no idea how Malcolm Hargrove was doing this. How he could just pay for thousands of people to get killed for his own selfish reasons. Tucker was just supposed to unlock the death of a few hundred people and most of them were enemies and he doubted he'd ever be able to live with himself again. 

Something must've been terribly wrong inside the Chairman's head. 

 _Amazing fucking epiphany you had there,_ came a voice from inside Tucker's head. Maybe there was something terribly wrong in Tucker's head, too, if he was hearing voices, too, now. Although… that particular voice… 

"Church? What the fuck? What are you doing in my head?" 

Wash turned around to look at Tucker, and for a moment he thought maybe he was actually going crazy, and had just shouted at the air with Church not actually being there… 

But then the little blue sprite projected next to his shoulder. "I thought I'd help out." 

"What, by mocking me inside of my own head?" 

"Epsilon, you can't just jump into someone's implants without their consent." Wash's voice sounded like cold steel and Epsilon looked properly guilty as he turned around to face him. 

"Look, I'm sorry, you guys were just leaving more quickly than I thought and I had to jump through a few computer panels to reach you on time, and then Tucker was so busy moping that I couldn't say anything." 

"Dude, I wasn't moping." 

"That's one hundred percent exactly what you were doing", Epsilon argued.

"And why did you decide to come here?", Wash said, tone moving a little from dangerous to annoyed. 

"I just thought you guys could use some backup. I get the whole: Keep the team small and stealthy thing, but you guys' mission is kinda the most important one, so I figure you can use all the backup you can get." 

"Pretty sure Carolina needs you more, since neither of us have enhancements", Wash said. 

"Well that's not true, Tucker has his helmet cam. And you have the healing unit." Tucker had no trouble imagining the unimpressed stare behind Wash's visor at the mention of the helmet cam. 

"Both pieces of equipment that can work perfectly fine on their own", Wash said. 

"Yeah, I know, but I can help with like tactical stuff and computer stuff… I just think it's better if more people are going, okay?" 

"I think you should go back inside and help out Carolina", Wash repeated. 

"It's fine, maybe he can actually help", Tucker said. He hadn't protested when Wash had suggested a small team, because he didn't really want to deal with any of the other Blues and Reds in this situation, but having Church there didn't seem like the worst idea. Having another set of eyes (sort of) there might actually help, and least Church wasn't someone who stood to lose a close friend from their actions. 

"Are you sure?" Wash asked. His hand was already halfway at his radio. "I could call Carolina and tell her to take him back." 

"I'm sure", Tucker confirmed. Church didn't say anything, but Tucker could feel a short feeling of gratitude emanating from the back of his head. 

"Alright, then", Wash said, even though his tone said that he still clearly disapproved. "Then let's get going." 

 

* * *

 

Felix arrived at his observation spot just a tad too late to shoot Agent Washington and Tucker through the head, as he saw them leaving through the scope of his sniper rifle. He wasn't too bothered about that. They had all the time in the world to kill these assholes, and a bullet from 200 yards distance felt a little too impersonal anyhow. Neither of them deserved a death that quick or easy. 

He should probably find out where they were heading, though. They probably thought they were very clever taking this mostly unknown and remote path out of the caves so that no one would see them. Of course that wasn't taking into account that Felix had worked in that stupid cave base for years and knew the ins and outs better than anyone, including Kimball herself. 

He'd had a feeling that this path would become important, and his instincts had steered him right. He was like a fucking psychic, he was so damn talented. Really, his enemies should count themselves lucky to have an amazing fighter like himself taking them out. Sadly most of them weren't that appreciative about it. Philistines.

It was really a shame that he'd arrived at his outlook just a tad too late, because he hadn't been able to track the assholes' path through the woods. From up here it was impossible to see, even if it was a great view of the entrance of the cave. 

Speaking of…

Maybe he could find out where they were going, after all. 

He strapped the sniper rifle to his back and made his way down the outcropping he'd been perched on. He took a slightly roundabout path so as not to be visible from the cave entrance and moved as quietly as possible. Not that he need to have bothered. He probably could've thrown his brother into an antilope stampede and Matthews wouldn't have noticed either. 

At least judging from the way he jumped when Felix pressed a knife to his throat, even though he really should've been able to spot him slightly before that. How the idiot had managed not to die in any of the battles he'd been in was anyone's guess. 

"Aaaah! Felix!", he yelled as the sharpened steel dug into the kevlar of his undersuit. 

"Matthews", Felix said in a friendly tone that may have been slightly at odds with the knife at his conversation partner's throat. "So nice to see you again, how have you been?" 

"Uh…" Looked like the idiot didn't know how to reply to that. Having superior officers remember his name was probably his biggest weakness, and Felix was more than a little annoyed that he remembered the biggest weakness of such an insignificant loser. He really wanted to be done with this stupid planet and leave as soon as possible so he could purge his head from stupid useless information like this. 

"You know, Matthews, you were always one of my favorites", Felix not quite lied. He put his knife back into his pocket and slung an arm around Matthews' shoulders. He actually had liked the guy to an extent because he was easy to understand and even easier to manipulate. Not that that had been all that difficult to do with anyone in the New Republic, but with people like Kimball it took a lot more work. 

"Um… thanks?" If a helmet could sweat, Felix was pretty sure that moisture would already be leaking out. Too easy. 

"We should catch up. What's going on with you guys lately?", Felix asked conversationally. 

"Uh… aren't you evil?" Good question, really. From a moral standpoint, probably. If not caring about the suffering one caused other people if it furthered one’s goal, and relishing in it for some assholes that deserved it, made one evil.

"Oh come on now, where did you get that from?" 

"From… everyone? From you? I saw your evil speech." 

"Oh Matthews. Don't you know you can't just believe anything they say on TV?"

"But _you_ were saying it on TV!" 

"Movie magic is an amazing thing. You wouldn't believe the kinds of things they can do with visual effects these days." Felix was having a hard time to stop himself from laughing out loud. Sure this conversation was wasting time, but sometimes you just had to waste a little time in favor of entertainment. All work and no play and all that jazz.

"You just held a knife to my throat!", Matthews protested and pointed at his neck for emphasis. Not that there was anything to see there, Felix hadn't even damaged the fabric of the undersuit. His heart hadn't been really in the threat considering Matthews was about as dangerous as a tame variety of houseplant.

"Oh, I've had knives to the throats of many of my close friends." Ah, good times.

"But you are really evil. I know that!" His tone sounded a little more confused than _I know that_ would imply, but fine, maybe it was time to stop with the game. And turn it into a different game, instead, that would be fun. 

"Okay, maybe. But you know, morality is all subjective. Just because we're on different sides of a conflict doesn't mean that either of us are inherently evil." 

"But your side wants to kill everyone on the planet for money!" 

Felix shrugged at that. "I guess that might not look too nice, from your perspective. But maybe killing all of you will help a lot of other people and it all balances out, you don't know that." Neither did Felix, to be honest. He wasn't too sure what Hargrove intended to do with the planet. He assumed it had something to do with all the alien tech down here, but once Felix held his paycheck in his hands he would stop caring about the question completely. 

"Well, that still sounds wrong", Matthews said. Not one for big philosophical discussion, then. Shocker. 

"Well that's your opinion and I have my opinion. Let's just agree to disagree. Anyway, I was wondering, maybe you can tell me, where did Tucker and Wash go, just now?" 

Even if Felix didn't have his arm slung around Matthews' shoulders, the way he tensed up would've been obvious. 

"I… I don't know. No idea." A good liar, the kid was not. 

"See, I think that you do. And I think that it would be in your best interest to tell me", Felix said, leaning in just a little closer. Matthews was luckily a tiny bit shorter than Felix, so Felix had an easy time tilting his head so that his visor looked maximum evil. Yes, he had practiced which angle made his helmet look the most evil in the mirror, so sue him.

"I-I'm not telling you anything", Matthews said with the trembling voice of someone who was either close to or in the process of peeing their pants. 

"Well, that's just not true. You are going to tell me things, but the question is, how much am I going to have to motivate you to do that?" With his free hand, Felix went to where he'd stashed his knife in an intentionally obvious motion. 

"You… you can't hurt me!", Matthews said with a break in his voice. 

"Oh, can't I? And is that because you're going to tell me everything I want to know without me having to hurt you? Because I'd like that." Actually he would be really disappointed and maybe cut the idiot up anyway, depending on what info he got out, but that wasn't the kind of thing conducive to this kind of negotiation. 

"No, because I died in the purge, so now you can't do anything to me." 

"Oh", Felix said. Interesting. So the Chorus people had some immortals on their own side. He'd suspected as much, but it was nice to have confirmation. Finding out who exactly those people were would probably also be beneficial. Maybe he could squeeze that out of this idiot, too, get more buck for his money. Or info for his torture as it were. 

"Yes, so you can just save yourself the trouble", Matthews said, a little more false bravado making its way back into his voice. It was almost adorable.

"I see. Well then…" Felix left a pause, let his moments hang in the air for a moment so that Matthews got more confidence and hope for him to crush later. "You're wrong."

"What? No I'm not, I was totally dead and came back, and the people who did that can't die, I thought you'd know that already." 

"Yeah, that part's true. But you're still wrong. I _can_ hurt you." Felix left another pause. The grin on his face was getting wider and wider, and it was almost a shame that Matthews couldn't see it through the helmet, because that probably would've worked great as an intimidation technique. Well at least the eye that had Wash's knife still sticking from the socket was visible, that might be a little intimidating. 

"In fact, because of this, I can hurt you _a whole lot more_. As my buddy Sharkface tells it, getting decapitated hurts like a bitch, even if you can walk away from it." 

"Oh…" It was less of a word and more of a whine. 

"Yeah, I can do pretty much anything to you and you don't even have the luxury of escaping through dying. Are you still not going to tell me where Wash and Tucker went?" 

Matthews considered that and Felix could almost see his face going very pale under that visor. Meanwhile Felix quietly detached his sidearm and fired the pistol into Matthews' helmet where the radio was. He didn't want him calling for help. 

Matthews crumbled into a heap at the entrance of the cave because Felix hadn't been too careful about aiming at the radio. The shot had probably also removed an ear and liquefied a considerable amount of brain matter. No problem, not like it had been in use, anyway. 

A moment later, Matthews stirred again, and through the now broken helmet, Felix could see the raw terror on his face. 

Oh this was going to be _fun._  

 

 


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And we're back to our regularly scheduled programming, thank you guys for your patience last week. 
> 
> Big thanks to SummonerMaenad, Yin, Aryashi, Anony-Moose, FanficNinja, RisingFlames, Aenlu, TheGreatElisaMousy, RiaTheDreamer, ProxiCentauri and AriRashkae for your lovely comments!

Their trek through the forest was mostly silent so far. Tucker had seemed a little more relaxed after Epsilon had shown up. Not exactly a sentiment Wash could understand, but if his teammate was fine with it, it wasn't really up to him to make a big fuss about it. No matter how much the idea of Epsilon jumping into someone without even asking was terrifying. Epsilon wouldn't do that to him, anyway. He and Tucker had a different relationship, so it probably was fine. 

But still, Tucker was tense and unhappy and it wasn't like Wash was doing all that much better. This wasn't the first time ever for Wash to cause the death of an ally, but this situation was a lot different from what had happened with South. Thinking about Grif and Simmons and all the other innocent people who were going to suffer from this made his own breathing stutter, and he'd known them for a lot less time than Tucker had. 

They were making their way to the testing grounds. It was the easiest to reach alien temple from the hidden exit they'd chosen. With a Pelican or a jeep it would have been faster, but they couldn't risk their enemies noticing their approach.

The long silent walk left Wash with plenty of time to think.

"Tucker?"

"Yeah, what?" 

"You… might not have to do this", Wash offered tentatively.

"Huh? What do you mean, did you just come up with some other method of getting rid of the unkillable zombie army? Cause if so, I'm all ears", Tucker said eagerly. 

"No, that's not exactly it. It's just that… I might be able to do it." 

"What? No, not unless you kill me first and take my sword, and I have to tell you, I'm not really cool with that." 

"What? No, I don't wanna kill you, where'd you get that idea?", Wash turned to look back at Tucker, and opened one of his armor pouches, to take out the sword handle he still had. 

"Wait, is that… Felix's? Or, Doyle's, I guess?" 

"Yeah, I took it when I turned off the purge after I killed Felix", Wash explained. 

"This is all getting kinda Highlander", Church projected to comment. "There can only be one… yada yada." 

"So that's where that ended up. I kinda just figured it was somewhere in the rubble with the crashed temple and the spaceship and shit", Tucker said. 

"No, I have it", Wash said. "And I don't know, maybe Santa needs you to deactivate the resurrection thing, because you're the one who turned it on, but if not, I can do it with this." 

"Oh", Tucker said. He paused a moment. "Are you sure you wanna do that? I mean, I don't want to do it, either, but I'm the one who fucked it up, so I should be the one to fix it." 

"You only had a chance to fuck it up, because I fucked up first", Wash said. "If Carolina and I had been faster at the temple, then none of this would've happened. I put you in this situation, I should be the one to deal with it." 

"What? You didn't fuck it up, you killed Felix, and I brought him back. Pretty sure the only fuck up here is me", Tucker argued. 

"If things had gone according to plan, then the Purge never would've been activated, you never would've had the chance to bring him back, so when it comes down to it, it is my fault."

"Yeah, but they were just faster, I consciously made the choice to do a stupid thing when I had no idea how it worked or how the consequences were gonna be. You had a good plan that went awry, I didn't even have a plan and stumbled into making everything terrible."

"Oh my god, can you guys just stop with this?", Church groaned. "If everything had gone differently then things would be different, doesn't matter whose fault it is. In the end, it's really Felix's fault, he's the one who activated the fucking Purge, you know? You guys just sucked at damage control, that's it." 

"What, so you want to say it's no one's fault?" Wash did his best to send a judging glare at the AI while also not running into any trees. 

"Or everyone's, take your pick, doesn't really matter, does it?"

"Fine, whatever, if it's no one's fault, then I should be the one to do it", Wash said. 

"What? Why? I mean, not that I'm clamoring for it or anything, but Kimball ordered me to do it, your job is just to get us to the temple safely." 

"Because you shouldn't have to", Wash said. He wasn't looking back at Tucker and Epsilon, just looking ahead through the forest. Because he had to see where he was going, of course. 

"Yeah, well, neither should you! This whole thing sucks, no one should have to do it", Tucker argued.

"Look, Tucker, you're…." Wash wasn't exactly sure how to put it. All the words that came to mind sounded unbelievably cheesy even if they were true. Good. Pure, Untainted. Not exactly something he wanted to say out loud, especially when Church was listening. "I've been the bad guy before, I can be the bad guy again." 

"What? Like when you shot Donut?"

"Exactly like that. The others are going to hate whoever it is that pushes that button, and you… you guys are a family, and if you're the one who kills Grif…" 

"Well that's bullshit. You're part of the family, too! Turfing my dirty work off to you so that the others like me more, you think I want that? That's even worse than just owning up to my mistake!" 

"It's not the same. I'm not really part of the team…" 

"Yes you are! Did you miss pretty much everything that happened since we painted your armor blue and hid you from the UNSC?" Hearing Tucker say that, that Wash was part of the family was moving him more than he'd like to admit. It had been a long time since he'd considered himself part of any family. And while he cared for the Reds and Blues deeply enough to consider them his family, he'd never really been sure if they would think of him the same way. 

That didn't make any of this easier.

"Do you _want_ to do it, Tucker? Because I am offering, and it doesn't really matter who should do it, or whose fault any of this is. Neither of us will be happy with it, but I've done bad things before and I can probably handle it better than you." 

"Dude, I've done bad things, too!"

"Not like I have. Trust me. I'm not gonna go into details here, but the point is, if it works when I do it, then I don't want to you to have to do this." 

"Yeah, well, I don't want _you_ to have to do this, either! It took enough work to get you, like, part of the team, and not the bad guy, anymore, and you shouldn't have to go back to that", Tucker argued. It made Wash feel strange to hear that. To hear that Tucker cared that much, not just about him but about his relationship with the others… He tried to remember the last time someone cared that much about him and had to draw a blank. 

Hearing that only made Wash more convinced that Tucker didn't deserve this burden. No matter how much he claimed to have fucked it up, he'd only done what he did because he wanted to get his friends back. But Wash had also run out of arguments. Not that they'd arrived at any conclusion. 

"It's better if I do it", Wash said.

"No it isn't." 

"Yes it is." 

"No it isn't." 

This probably could've gone on the entire way to the forest temple, if the radio hadn't decided to interrupt them. 

With a voice that Wash hadn't thought he'd ever hear again.

"Hello, Agent Washington", the smooth tone of the counselor sounded in his helmet. Without even meaning to, Wash's fists clenched. He had to employ all of his willpower to keep on walking forward and not just freeze on the spot. 

"Who's that?", Tucker asked. Looked like Wash wasn't the only one who was receiving the transmission. 

"That motherfucker!", Church hissed, and Wash probably wasn't imaging the hint of Omega he heard in his voice. 

"It's been a long time. I'm glad to get the opportunity to speak with you again, Agent Washington. How are you doing?" 

"I'm super", Wash said through clenched teeth. "Where the hell are you? Are you on Chorus? And why?" 

"That's good to hear", the counselor said calmly, completely ignoring the questions. "I feel like I owe you an apology." 

 _Oh, wonderful._ "You _feel_ like that?" 

"Yes. I have to admit, during your time in the project, I severely underestimated you. If I had been asked at any point which Agent was most likely to live the longest… I'm sad to say you would not have been among those I seriously considered." 

"What, and now you wanna apologize for the fact that I managed to not die?" 

"Oh no, on the contrary, Agent Washington", the counselor said. "I congratulate you on your success. The fact that we underestimated you so severely was probably the gravest mistake the director and I made." 

"What, _that's_ the biggest mistake?", Epsilon interjected. "Not predicting that Wash would kick your asses? That's the _biggest_ mistake? Because I can think of one or two others that might rank." 

"After our initial assessment, I wasn't even sure whether to recommend you join the project", the counselor went on, ignoring Epsilon's input completely. "The director overruled me on the matter. That may also have been a mistake on his part." 

Hearing that gave Wash a weird feeling. On one hand, if he'd never gotten involved with Freelancer, then they never would've put Epsilon inside his head, he never would've been involved with any of their bullshit, but then what would his life have been like? He'd been facing a court martial when the counselor had talked to him. He probably would've gotten a dishonorable discharge, or maybe even spent time in a military prison and then what? He never would've met the Reds and Blues, that was for sure. 

Even if he regretted many, maybe even most things related to his time in Project Freelancer, a life completely without it wasn't what he wished for, either. 

Project Freelancer had made him who he was, for better or for worse. Usually worse. But looking back at Tucker, he couldn't deny that some good things had come of it, too. 

"I suppose it was your tenacity and adaptability we didn't predict", the counselor went on. "Compared to your squad mates your skills were more… average, but surprisingly versatile. And I have to admit that after the incident with the Epsilon AI, I didn't expect you to ever return to active duty. I was honestly quite surprised when I was told that you had regained the ability to dress yourself." 

It probably wasn't a coincidence that the counselor was transmitting this to both him and Tucker. Hopefully this wasn't begin broadcast anywhere else. He'd never told Tucker about his experience with Epsilon in much detail, just the broad strokes, and the two years he'd spent in a mental hospital afterwards wasn't something he even liked to think about, let alone discuss. 

"Do you have a point?" He could tell that his own voice sounded testy, and he was annoyed at himself for it. This was exactly what the counselor wanted, to get him riled up to… whatever it was he was trying to accomplish. He really didn't want to play into whatever the plan was, but damn, if there was one thing that the counselor was good at, it was getting under people's skin.

Again, he ignored the fucking question and said, "I was very impressed with your time as a Recovery Agent, as well. Not only did I not suspect that you were working against us, as I now know, but you also took to the job remarkably well."

"Who the fuck is this dude?", Tucker asked in the dramatic pause the counselor was leaving. 

"Aidan Price. The _Counselor_ ", Epsilon said, his tone dripping with venom. Interesting. Wash had never had any idea what the counselor's name was. He'd stopped even wondering a long time ago, and that was all part of the manipulations. From their first meeting when the Counselor had taken to calling Wash David from the get go, but never introducing himself as anything more than 'counselor', he'd cultivated this imbalance of power. Made himself into more of a concept, a position rather than a real person. Good on Church for finding out that name. 

"I was not convinced that you would be able to do the job", the counselor continued. No. Aidan Price continued. That would probably take a while to get into his head, if he ever managed it. "I didn't think disposing of the bodies of your former comrades would be something that you were able to handle, but you proved me wrong. I was quite impressed by the ease with which you carried out your work." 

"What, do you want some tips?" 

"It was a miscalculation on my part, I suppose. I thought that performing that duty would cause you considerable… emotional distress. But it appears I misjudged you at that junction once again. I suppose I was under the misconception that you had _cared_ about the other operatives." 

Wash really really didn't want to let any of this get to him, but dammit if the counselor hadn't hit a fucking nerve, here. He'd thought that at this point he was over that man being able to manipulate him, but this sentence… like nails on chalkboard in his mind. 

"Oh fuck you!", Church howled. "All of this shit is your fault, you constructed the whole fucking situation this way and now you're giving Wash shit for it? Where the fuck do you get off even talking to him?" 

"Shut up, Epsilon." As Wash looked back, there was a purple flicker to the AI's projection, but thankfully he heeded the request. This was not a battle that he needed Epsilon of all people to fight for him. 

"Whatever became of Agent South Dakota, Agent Washington? The official report lists her as killed by friendly fire from Private Caboose, but considering previous events, I have a hard time believing that that is the entire truth." 

What he'd done to South wasn't something he was proud of. It had been taken a long time before he'd even let himself consider that he'd killed one of his former teammates in cold blood, and if he was completely honest with himself, he still had a hard time feeling unequivocally sorry about it. She had shot him in the back. She had betrayed him just for her own personal gain, and according to Delta had done the same to North. The logic that keeping her around would've been a hindrance at best and an active danger at best still held up. 

But looking back at how she'd been when he'd first met her, how she and North had worked together when the project had first started… he doubted South would've ever become the sort of person who betrayed her own brother for the sake of an AI if not for the manipulations of the counselor. Aidan Price. Not just a position, a real life human. A real life piece of shit. 

"Do you consider South a success?", he asked. Two could play at this game, and dammit, he'd let the counselor control the course of this conversation for too long, let him control the course of too many conversations and too many life choices for even longer. "You turned her into that. I'm not saying what I did to her was right, but if it hadn't been for all the shit you did to her and North, this whole thing never would've happened." 

"Agent South had a harder time dealing with the pressure of a military program with such high expectations of its operatives than others." 

"Yeah, no shit. You did all of that on purpose, you put her in a position to fail, gave North better rankings and an AI and punished her for the failures you set her up for, are you surprised she didn't deal with that well? You took a fucking phenomenal two people team and turned them against one another, are you proud of that?" 

"Agent South Dakota's issues were unfortunate, but they did provide valuable data." 

"Really? Taking a team that could've been really good and then setting them all up to crash and burn doesn't seem like good science to me." 

"I'm not saying that the project was a success, Agent Washington. Many things didn't go according to plan, as I'm sure you're aware. The fact that a group of sub par soldiers were able to bring about its downfall in the end does attest to that. But I feel we're getting off track here. I believe I was in the process of apologizing to you." 

"If that's an apology you fucking suck at that, dude", Tucker interjected. Wash was inclined to agree. 

"Private Tucker", the counselor said, as if he'd just noticed that he was part of the call, even though he must've specifically radioed him. 

"It's _Captain_ Tucker, asswipe", Church interjected. Tucker's head turned in surprise, looking at the AI sprite. 

"Oh yes, of course, my apologies. Captain Tucker, in light of what I have learned about Agent Washington over the years, I feel it's only appropriate to offer you some advice." 

"Oh cool, so I get to do the opposite, cause you seem like a douche", Tucker said. It was somehow refreshing to hear someone talk to the counselor that way. Every single one of the Freelancers should've been saying stuff like that to the man, but they'd never gotten the chance. Maybe Wash should switch over to that at this point, just spit curses at the guy until he got too annoyed and disconnected the radio call. 

"You should be very careful about trusting him. He has had severe anger issues his entire life, and as I've mentioned before he's had no qualms about disposing of the bodies of his former friends and even murdering one of them. You should keep in mind that he may betray you, if it suits his needs." 

"Oh yeah sure, and I'm totally gonna trust the ominous voice talking shit about my friend over the guy I've gotten to know for several years, because I'm an idiot", Tucker said in a bored tone. “Plus, many of my best friends have murdered others of my best friends. That’s just how we roll.”

"I was merely attempting to help. Of course, it is up to you what you want to do with this information." 

"Flush it down the toilet, that's what!", Church said. "Not like the most untrustworthy person in the universe has any room to talk about who to trust. Sitting in a glass house and throwing stones, ever heard about that one?" 

"Agent Washington, I've been meaning to ask this, does it cause you distress to be working so closely with the Epsilon AI? Are you not worried about Captain Tucker's and Agent Carolina's safety when they host the AI? After your experiences I was not expecting you to try and retrieve the unit, let alone permit it to interact with anyone you consider important." 

"My issues with Epsilon don't concern you, counselor", Wash said tersely.

"Considering how unstable it was, I have trouble believing that using it is without its side effects", the counselor mused. "I personally urged the Director to just delete the unit after the damage it caused, but he did not want all the effort that went into creating it to go to waste." 

"So, what you're saying is basically if you had run the project it all would've been fine but the Director was too stupid to listen to you?", Tucker summarized. "Cool story, bro." 

"Guys, I finally figured out how to cut the transmission", Epsilon announced. "All in favor?" 

Wash decided just to nod, because he didn't want the counselor to be able to hear the relief in his voice at the prospect of being rid of him. Tucker gave a big thumbs up. The radio made a clicking noise as the transmission was shut off. Not that there was actually any physical clicking going on, Epsilon had likely just added that for dramatic effect. 

"So, what do you think was the point of that?", Tucker asked. "Some asshole from Freelancer just calling you up to talk shit?" 

"Guess we're about to find out." 

 

* * *

 

Maybe Donut should've put in more effort to get his own squad. They hadn't given them squads when they'd been with the Feds, and Sarge had gotten himself promoted to Colonel after, while Wash had just taken all of the younger soldiers under his wing to become drill sergeant supreme, and Donut had kind of missed his own opportunity to get to be in charge of stuff.

Not that he really minded. Leading people into battle wasn't exactly his thing, but now, seeing Grif and Simmons instruct their troops and seeing Caboose's team translating whatever he was saying into orders, he kinda wished he'd taken the opportunity himself. It looked pretty cool. 

Well, cool was relative, most of Grif's orders ended in 'or whatever', while Simmons kept stuttering and making odd movements with his hands that looked a bit like he was having a seizure, but still. If Donut had gotten his own team, then he would've been in charge of the color scheme, too. What a missed opportunity. 

Then again, looking at Simmons' team, there were some shades of lightish red present there, already, that might've caused some confusion. But then again, there were so many different colors to choose from. Peach, fuchsia, puce, salmon… he'd have needed a lot of soldiers under his command to live out all of his color dreams, there. 

But of course that also carried the risk of misunderstandings. Grif's team was already dubbed gold team, even if Grif's color was clearly orange. If Donut had founded his own team there was a realistic chance it might've been called 'pink team'.

Oh the horror. 

And there was definitely something nice about not being in charge. That also meant it wasn't his fault if anything went wrong. Not that he was expecting anything to go wrong, mind you.

But it all felt wrong, though. He'd gone into battle with the others countless times and he knew how it was supposed to go, and it was mostly going like that, but also not really. 

Palomo kept clinging to Jensen, even though he wasn't even technically on Red Team, and Simmons kept looking at Grif whenever he made a pause in his instructions, which, thanks to the stuttering, happened quite a lot. 

If everything went well then it would also go really badly, and Donut didn't like considering that. He was an optimist at heart, always had been, and they had managed to get through so many sticky situation without any casualties that it felt unreal to know that some people definitely wouldn't survive the day, it was just a matter of who. 

And there weren't even any speeches about how Grif's death would be great for something or other, no inspiring music out of nowhere talking about the glory of the red army and it made Donut feel antsy. Sarge was still in a coma in the infirmary, and when Donut had asked if he would wake up soon, he'd heard Doctor Grey say 'I don't know' for the first time since he'd met her. 

It wasn't very encouraging. Red Team might only be him and Simmons, soon. Two people wasn't really much of a team, at all. Of course, who knew if either of them would survive today, either? 

They were all stationed at the largest entrance to the caves, with smaller squads barricading the side entrances. The look-outs had already reported sightings of the enemy, so they were probably going to be here soon.

It was almost a relief when the first sounds of an explosion came from the outside. At least that broke the tense atmosphere of waiting for everything going to hell. 

"Ah yes, and if it gets cold out, you should not forget your mittens, otherwise your hands might be cold, yes", Caboose said, while the rest of the squads were already making their way to their positions. "And also don't let the bad guys shoot you, because that would be bad." 

Donut didn't stick around to listen to the rest of that speech. It just wasn't as inspiring as hearing Sarge rant about the glory of an army that hadn't even been real in the first place. Also, he was in charge of screaming, and it was a job that he took very seriously.

He made his way to the designated outcropping and took cover. He'd taken as many grenades as he could carry, but someone had been nice enough to stash an entire crate of them there. Looked like Donut was supposed to hang out here tossing for a while. It wasn't the worst position, but it would've been nice if there were some more decoration, maybe some lace, hot chocolate for later… 

But that wasn't why he was here, of course. Peering over the rocks that had been placed as cover he could see a group of about thirty space pirates in various states of alieniness advancing toward the cave entrance. They all looked very mismatched. The few that were wearing armor had pieces that neither fit, nor fit with one another. Atrocious. Many of them didn't seem to have guns, and keeping them away from people so they couldn't tear someone apart by hand was the biggest priority. 

Donut pulled the pin from the first grenade and threw it. It hit his intended target without a problem. The explosion was spot on, and tore the man? Woman? Non binary alien person? wide open. It wasn't exactly pretty looking, but Donut was still oddly proud of it. If this was all it took, maybe the whole alien thing wasn't that big of an issue after all, that would be nice. 

Maybe the people at the previous encounter just hadn't made the attackers dead enough. Not that he doubted Carolina's skill, but maybe they were just a lot tougher to kill than normal. In Twilight the vampires needed to be decapitated, dismembered and set on fire to stay properly dead, and death by explosion checked pretty much all of those boxes, if a little messily.

The limbs of the alien he'd hit were starting to twitch, and then went from twitching to coordinated movement again in under a minute. Huh, so maybe grenades weren't the right formula, either. The mostly destroyed alien face put itself back together, tendrils of tissue moving almost like they were being puppeteered. Probably better that Donut didn't have any hot chocolate here, after all, because he felt like gagging at the sight. 

He checked the mission clock on his HUD. Three minutes between the explosion and the guy getting up and starting to walk toward the cave entrance again. Donut looked at his crate of grenades and then back at the pirates that were advancing. He wasn't exactly a math genius like Simmons, but three minutes per grenade per person, times thirty ish alien dudes meant lots of grenades by his count for not that much time. He wasn't sure if he had enough to make much of a difference here. 

But still, better keep tossing. 

 


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay, I don't even have a good excuse, I was just playing Mahjong with some friends (no not the computer game where you click on matching tiles, the competitive one. Richii, if anyone's interested, it's fun!)
> 
> Also I noticed that my estimated chapter count was a little off, the main events of the end happen in 15 and 16 but there's a need for some epilogue after that and that gets its own chapter, so I'll annoy you one week longer than anticipated with this. 
> 
> Thanks as always to TheGreatElisaMousy, SummonerMaenad, FanficNinja, RisingFlames, Yin, top-secret-ultra-classified (TheCleverOnesAreAlive), AriRashkae and RiaTheDreamer for all the lovely feedback!

Locus was a professional. Working with these people right now was the most advantageous way for them to attain their goals, and the way they looked made no difference to their usefulness. 

He wondered how often he'd have to remind himself of that fact, before it would really sink in. 

Keeping cloaked he surveyed the battlefield through the scope of his sniper rifle. He'd tried to pick off single soldiers that were causing the most trouble, but so far he hadn't had much luck. Seemed as though Private Donut, the biggest thorn in their side at the moment, had learned a thing or two about keeping cover since their raid on crash side Bravo. 

He'd managed to take out one New Republic sniper, but that was really the most useful thing he'd done so far. He knew he could do better, had done it often enough before, but no matter how much he tried to force himself to concentrate, his shots kept not aligning, and he'd rather not take any that would be unsuccessful so as not to give away his position via useless vapor trails.

He should probably adjust his position. Get a better angle somewhere else. But deep down he knew that that would probably not make a difference. Because he knew what his issue was, he just didn't know how to solve it. Or whether he really wanted to solve it. 

Felix always liked to make fun of his mental issues, which was completely overblown as far as Locus was concerned. He had everything handled perfectly well, he was a professional, a true soldier, and could function perfectly fine. None of his issues impaired him, and if he sometimes had to fight violent flashbacks, then that was no one's business but his own. 

Like right now. 

A group of grotesque looking aliens attacking an outpost of human soldiers who were desperately trying to stay alive. Not exactly a new situation for Locus to find himself in. 

He'd just never pictured himself on the side of the aliens before. 

And that was probably why he couldn't line up his shots even if some of the Chorus soldiers were more than a little sloppy about sticking to cover. 

It was all completely ridiculous. The Great War was long over, aliens and humans were now allies, so working together with them wasn't something that should revolt him so, and even if that were a legitimate reason, none of these people were actually aliens. All of them were soldiers he'd had no trouble working with three days ago, so there was no logical reason to have problems with this now. 

Sharkface had taken to painting a red stripe on his side in lieu of wearing armor, since they hadn't been able to acquire any amor yet that would fit an alien, but the man had an aesthetic to uphold, apparently. 

That made him easiest to distinguish among their men. He was the only one not either in black UNSC armor or sporting generic grey or brown scales. Felix was scouting different entrances to the base, so that stripe of red was the only bit of bright color among their troops. 

Locus saw him holding a New Republic soldier up by the throat. The stripes on the man's armor were turquoise, almost the same color as the standard UNSC green stripe that his and Felix' squad had worn once upon a time. Sharkface's alien head was in Locus' crosshairs. An Elite, threatening a UNSC comrade. The shot lined up perfectly. 

Breathe out, finger on the trigger, consider the wind, consider the movement of his target…

No. 

Sharkface wasn't a target. 

Someone else shot him in the head from somewhere behind the green soldier, and the man dropped to the ground, rubbing his throat, before quickly getting up and running away from where Sharkface's head wound was already starting to regenerate. 

The green soldier was actually one of his targets. 

Sharkface wasn't his target. 

But he sure as hell felt like one. 

 

* * *

 

The temple of the testing grounds looked way more imposing than Tucker remembered it. It had always looked like a big imposing alien structure with mostly red light, but somehow it felt more sinister now. 

 _Stop psyching yourself out,_ Church admonished. 

 _Dude, mind your own business,_ Tucker thought back at him. Sure, it was a valid point, he didn't really feel like being criticized by someone sitting inside of his own head. 

"Thermal scan is clear", Church announced out loud. "Looks like we're the only people here." 

"Good. I could really do without more interruptions", Wash said. He still seemed on edge from all the crap the counselor dude had said. Shitty coward, didn't even have the guts to say all this stuff to Wash's face. Sitting cosily somewhere, dragging him. Tucker really wasn't a fan. He didn't know too many details about Wash's time at Freelancer, but even he'd been able to tell that that stuff dug deep. 

Not to mention Epsilon was still seething at the back of his head about it. 

"So, let's go find Santa", Wash said. Hearing it in that serious tone of a voice made the name sound even more ridiculous. 

"Alright", Tucker said. There was a joke involving lap sitting bubbling up inside him, but Epsilon already groaned at the back of Tucker's head even though Tucker hadn't finished thinking it up yet. 

_Dude, don't be so judgmental._

_You're impossible,_ Epsilon replied, the little blue spoilsport. _Dude, I heard that. Also you're blue yourself, so shut the fuck up._

Wash was holding the sword handle of the other alien sword, turning it over in his hands. 

"Dude, why didn't you tell me you had that? We could've practiced together, done like a real duel and shit, it would've been awesome!" 

"It would probably have ended in someone losing their limbs", Wash said. The idea that it would have been Tucker was somehow implied. "These things aren't toys."

"I know that, dude, I'm the alien sword expert around here", Tucker shot back. "Still think it would've been awesome." 

"Well, after all of this is over, maybe we can try. With lots of safety precautions in place", Wash offered. It made Tucker picture both of them in heavy pillows and blankets, a mattress tied around each of their middles. Epsilon snorted at the mental image. 

"Yeah, but only if that stuff looks awesome", Tucker said. Wash was still fiddling with the sword handle, but then he grabbed it steady and sure, and activated it with a flick of the wrist. 

Damn that looked hot. Did Tucker look that hot when he did that?

 _No_ , Epsilon commented from inside his head. 

 _Oh please, you're just jealous because you can't play with your sword, cause you're an AI,_ Tucker shot back. _Also, if you think I don't look_ that _hot when I do this, means you think Wash looks hot right now._

 _Wha… you're the one who brought it up, you think Wash looks hot!_ , Epsilon protested. 

Tucker looked the other soldier up and down, not being particularly subtle about checking him out. The second alien sword had a slightly more purple glow than Tucker's, which had a more blueish tint. That slightly purple glow reflected off Wash's armor lighting up the lower half of his visor, and it looked pretty damn fine. 

Would probably look even better if Wash wasn't wearing the armor. Or anything, really. 

"Dude, if you're gonna think stuff like that, I'm outta here!", Church protested out loud as Tucker took a moment to really imagine the shine of the blade reflected of Wash's rock hard abs. Imagined!Wash had helpfully taken the time to oil his body up before appearing in Tucker's fantasy. 

"Dude, I didn't ask you to come, you picked this, so you have to live with the consequences", Tucker said with a laugh. 

"And… what exactly where you thinking?", Wash asked. The tone practically screamed: one of my eyebrows is raised judgmentally. 

"You don't want to know", Church said almost immediately, before Tucker had a chance to explain himself. 

 _You don't know that he doesn't wanna know_ , Tucker thought at Church. _Maybe he's totally into that._

_Oh god, can we stop with the mental images, please? Find out what Wash is or isn't into on your own time, preferably when I'm on a different planet, or something._

_Oh, so you're giving me your blessing to find out what Wash is into? Thanks Church, that's really sweet of you!_

_Dude, you're gonna be the death of me_ , Church complained. 

"Tucker, is everything okay?" Wash asked, which made him realize that he'd been standing there with his head slightly tilted, staring blankly into the air, listening to the voice inside his head. While he could've spent all of that mental energy on making up a good pick up line. Damn shame. 

"Yeah, Church is just throwing a hissy fit", Tucker said easily. 

"It was not a hissy fit!", Church complained. "Tucker is being impossible, as I'm sure surprises no one." 

"Can you maybe postpone the argument?", Wash asked. There was that long suffering tone of his that Tucker was very familiar with at this point in their friendship. "We do have work to do." 

"Yeah, let's just get going", Church said, his little avatar stomping toward the interior of the temple. For a moment. "Uh, Tucker, I actually need you to come with me, I can't go there on my own." 

"Yeah, sure", Tucker said with a shrug. He'd been planning on doing that exact thing, anyway, but it was just too funny to see Church walking forward without actually moving after a certain distance. 

 He followed Church into the temple, Wash close behind. Tucker kept his rifle in his hands even though he was going to need the sword soon, if he wanted to stop Wash from flipping the switch on the whole thing. Still, it was probably better if one of them kept a long range weapon for now. Epsilon's scan may not have shown any hostile forces, but Tucker still didn't feel at ease. 

And he also still had to clear up the thing with Wash about who was going to activate the death thing. Or turn off the resurrection thing, or whatever. 

"Wash?" 

"Yeah?" 

"I should be the one to do it. Awesome as you look with that sword, I don't think you should do this." 

"Tucker, like I said, I'm offering to do it. You don't have to do it", Wash said again. Looked like this argument was going to go in circles again. Maybe because Tucker wasn't actually that interested in winning, he just didn't want Wash to win, either. 

 _Doesn't look like either of you wins, no matter what you do,_ Epsilon thought at Tucker. Out loud he said, "Okay while you guy argue about that, I'm gonna take a look at the computer." With that Tucker could feel the odd sense of the AI jumping from his implants. Felt like there was a sudden gust of wind at the back of his head, even though he was wearing a helmet. 

"It's my mess, I gotta fix it", Tucker said. Arguing for doing it himself felt weird, when there was really nothing he wanted to do less than that, but letting Wash do it… just didn't feel right at all. Wash had been through enough shit, the conversation with the counselor had just proved that again. He didn't need this. 

"I already said, it's not your mess alone…" Wash trailed off in the middle of the sentence and Tucker turned around to look at him. His sword was flickering on and off, like there were power issues, before it turned off completely. Wash turned the handle over, looked at it, and then waved it again to turn it on. Nothing happened. 

"Huh", Wash said. "Did yours ever do that?"

"No, are you holding it right? You have to click the power button", Tucker said. 

"I pressed it. I don't have to keep it pressed the entire time, do I?" 

"No, just for turning it on. And off, but that's not really the problem, I guess." Tucker stepped closer to Wash and looked at the handle, careful to look at it from the side so that if it decided to turn on again after all, he didn't get his face impaled. That wasn't really something he needed right now. "There, that button, did you press that?" 

Wash's thumb was over the power button and pressed down on it again, but nothing happend. 

"Do you think there might be interference in here?", Wash asked. 

"I dunno, I used mine here before, I don't see why…" Tucker said, putting his rifle on his back and grabbing his own sword. It turned on without a hitch. 

"That's weird", Tucker said, turning it on and off again without any issues. "Works just fine for me, dude." 

"But then why isn't this one…" Wash pressed the button a couple more times, but nothing happened. Just like when everyone else tried to turn on Tucker's sword. 

"That's probably because it doesn't belong to you", A familiar voice said from way too close behind them. 

Tucker whirled around, activating his sword in the same motion, but he was too slow. A vicious kick threw him down to the floor and knocked the air from his lungs. Tucker pushed himself back up to his hands, but before he could get his bearings, a grenade landed right next to him. He made to push it away, but he wasn't fast enough. 

As it exploded, Tucker realized that reaching his hand toward a live grenade maybe wasn't the best idea, anyway, but he didn't have to much time to dwell on it, before he was flying through the air. He turned off his sword so he wouldn't hurt himself on impact and flailed for something to hold on to. His left hand scraped the side of the platform they'd been on but he didn't find purchase and just dropped to the lower level of the temple. 

"You can't use it, because the previous owner isn't actually dead." Felix. Fucking Felix had fucking showed up there because of fucking course. Because their luck was just the shittiest thing ever, god dammit. 

That also meant Tucker didn't have the luxury of just lying on the floor and coughing a bit, like he really wanted to do. He pushed himself up, did a quick check if any of his bones were broken and came up with a semi reassuring 'probably not'. Maybe a cracked rib, judging from how it hurt to breathe in deeply. That sucked, but considering he'd been right next to an exploding grenade and fallen down a story it wasn't too bad. 

Okay, it was more like three feet, actually. That probably helped.

Tucker looked for the nearest stairs and ran towards them. The tinge in his butt as he did that told him he'd probably be a mess of bruises pretty soon. 

There were noises of a struggle coming from upstairs, but Tucker couldn't tell what was going on from down here. His imagination was happy to provide all sorts of scenarios that had Wash skewered on that knife that had been sticking from Felix's head during his video call. He resolutely pressed down those images. Wash was awesome and badass and Felix would have a hard time sticking anything into him. 

Heh. 

And there were two of them, so Tucker could just stow his sword and grab his rifle and sink the asshole full of lead until he was too heavy to move, screw that immortality thing. 

Just attach his sword… to the magstrip…

If only he had still been holding it. 

Fuck. 

He turned around frantically, looking for the thing. He swore he'd just had it while he was flying through the air, where the fuck had he dropped it? Looking around the platform he didn't see it. Hopefully it hadn't dropped off the edge into the jungle because looking for it there would probably take forever. He couldn't see how Wash was doing against zombie Felix, but forever sounded like a little longer than that thing should be going on for. 

He scrambled back to where he'd dropped and looked around for the sword. It wasn't there.

"The fuck are you doing, idiot?", Church's sprite appeared, looking bigger, and glowing weirdly dark, like Santa usually did. Looked like he'd hijacked the temple's holographic projection equipment. "Wash is up against an unkillable zombie, and now he can't activate the thing, so get your ass in gear." 

"I dropped my sword!", Tucker whined, patting around the floor frantically. Was there some nook or cranny that it might've fallen into? It liked hanging out in random holes in the floor, that's where they'd first met, so maybe that's where it was again. 

"You dropped your… oh fucking beautiful. Not the hero we need but the hero we deserve, you dipshit." 

"Hey, I don't know if you noticed but I got thrown through the air by an explosion, okay? I know you don't have a body, but let me tell you, that's not fun." 

"Don't make fun of people for not having bodies, that's rude", Epsilon complained.

"Shut up, help me find the damn thing! Don't you have sensors and shit, or is all your processing power spent on your 'bitching' subroutine?" 

"Bitching's not a subroutine that's core programming right there", Church said. His sprite disappeared, and that didn't really improve things for Tucker. A moment later, a new projection appeared, though, a giant arrow in the air, a few yards away from where Tucker was kneeling, pointing at the floor. 

"Sweet!", Tucker exclaimed, scrambling to get over there. His sword was lying in a crack on the floor, easy to miss if you didn't know where to look. "Thanks, Church. I think that's the most useful thing you've done since I've met you." 

"Oh, ha ha, see if I help you ever again", Church huffed. "Of course I found it, I am the best, I'll remind you." 

"Yeah save it for Caboose, we gotta get going." 

"You're the one who has to get going, I'm in the freaking computer, I'm already there. Not my fault your big organic ass is so slow", Church protested. Well, he had a point. Tucker grabbed the sword and attached it to his hip rather than turn it on, so he could run unimpeded. 

As Tucker came back up to where Wash and Felix were fighting, he was glad to discover that Wash was still standing and hadn't been torn into any small pieces yet. He was holding the knife that had previously been sticking out of Felix's eye socket. Its edge was a bit rusty, now and he looked pretty badass holding that. Felix was holding the sword handle though, laughing. 

"Now, pay attention to how a pro does it", Felix cooed, and pressed the power button.

The sword fizzled to life, flickered a few times, and then turned off again, just like it had done for Wash a few minutes earlier. 

"Yeah, that looked really professional", Wash deadpanned, in an almost bored tone. 

"Argh, what the fuck?!", Felix screeched. "Is this because you took it while I was dead and now the stupid thing can't make up its mind? This is bullshit." 

"Or maybe it's because you got it from Donald Doyle, and he's not dead anymore, either", Church's voice came from the speakers in the room, even if he wasn't projecting anywhere. 

"Oh, great, Tinkerbell is here, too", Felix groaned. "Tell me the blue moron isn't here, at least." 

"Why, are you scared of him? You should be, he's like freakishly strong, he could probably hug you to death", Church taunted. 

"Hey Felix!", Tucker shouted, pulling his sword handle off his hip. "Watch closely, _this_ is how a pro does it." He activated his sword with the same movement that Felix had just done, with the difference that for him the sword was shining strong and steady. 

Through the hole in Felix's visor he could see the one visible eye narrowing in rage. It was pretty satisfying to see. 

It also made Felix turn toward him and stalking in his direction with that look on his face, which was less reassuring. He might have had a sword and Felix didn't, but that hadn't stopped Felix from stabbing him last time, either. 

"I don't think we're done here", Wash said, grabbing Felix by the shoulder and then clocking him right across the face. It was a pretty awesome punch, cracking even more of Felix's visor, glass shards flying all over. Damn, Wash was hot even without glowing alien swords. 

"No, you're right", Felix said, and turned to Wash, moving to hit him, but Wash dodged in time. But while he was doing that, Felix also pulled out that stupid gun of his that shot sticky grenades. It took Tucker a moment to realize that the stupid thing was pointed right the fuck at him. Felix wasn't even looking in his direction, but his aim was true. 

Tucker managed to dive out of the way just in time, and the explosion of the grenade rattled the floor he landed on so much that he lost his footing and faceplanted. 

At least he kept his grip on his sword this time. That shit wasn't happening to him twice. 

"Tucker quit screwing around, get up!", Church admonished from the loud speakers. 

"I'm not screwing around, I keep getting blown up", Tucker protested as he got to his feet again. 

"Yeah, whatever, stop getting blown up then", Church said, tone filled with absolutely zero sympathy. Tucker scrambled over to the next level of the temple, to where the testing ground was. He weaved past the portal and looked for the floating symbol that usually indicated that he could do something useful with his sword there. 

"Over here!", Chuch called, his sprite waving at one of the consoles. Tucker chanced a glance back to where Wash and Felix were fighting and nearly stopped. Felix had somehow regained control over the knife and was pressing it worryingly close to Wash's throat. Wash was pushing him away, but it didn't look good for him. "Tucker! Now!" 

Right. 

Looking at Wash didn't help him, and even if he managed to shoot Felix from this distance and not accidentally hit Wash it wouldn't help in the long run, either. 

He vaulted over a console that was in the way, in a move that was fucking awesome and found the symbol floating in the air that he'd been looking for. 

"Santa? Are you there?" 

"Yeah, he's here", Church said. "Come on, do your thing!" 

Right. 

Do his thing. He activated the sword, and held it next to the symbol, but… oh god he was really going to do this… he looked back at where Wash and Felix where fighting again, but there were pillars in the way, so he couldn't see what was going on. 

Just plunging the sword in would be the easiest solution for Wash's fight, and yet… Thinking of Grif, thinking of Matthews, Palomo and all the other soldiers that had looked at Kimball like she was the devil since she'd made the announcement. Even though he was the devil, he was the one who was going to take their loved ones away… 

"Tucker, what the fuck are you waiting for?", Epsilon raged. "We don't have all day! Just put your fucking thing in the thing!" 

"Bow chika bow wow", Tucker whispered. Took a deep breath. Had to take a moment to revel in not being the guy who murdered everyone yet.

 And then he plunged the sword through the symbol. 

 


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fooled you! You guys were so good about predicting things throughout the entire story I actually removed some hints to the resolution from the previous chapter so that it wasn't too easy, and no one said it. So, hope you guys are not too disappointed with how it turned out. 
> 
> Big thanks go to Aryashi, TheGreatElisaMousy, FanficNinja, SummonerMaenad, RisingFlames, ProxiCentauri, Yin, top-secret-ultra-classified (TheCleverOnesAreAlive), AriRashkae and RiaTheDreamer for commenting and also to RiaTheDreamer and creatrixnami on tumblr for giving this story a shoutout on Rec day!

Simmons' gun had run out of ammo approximately 10 minutes ago and considering that he'd been doing a pretty good job of not dying so far. Like, he was still alive. If he had a spreadsheet, he’d make a note here, “Huge Success”.

First he'd taken to beating the bad guys with his empty rifle, and then he'd thrown it at a guy. Which had worked okay as far as getting that guy to stop pummeling him, but had left him without a weapon to pummel anybody with. 

He'd then taken to just punching people with his robot arm. That was a questionable idea because Simmons had always been very bad at hand to hand combat and had no idea how to throw the best punch or how not to get punched. But in practice it turned out pretty okay. Doctor Grey had done some tinkering with his robot arm and the thing was a whole lot stronger now than he'd been aware of. He'd actually heard some of the bones in the first guys' skull crack, while his artificial knuckles were perfectly fine. 

Simmons had never before in his life felt quite so metal. literally. He'd never really felt metal at all, before, so this was a big step in the right direction for him. 

Still, he was happy when a well timed sticky grenade thrown by Donut obliterated the nearest enemy and he had an opportunity to scuttle back behind their line of defense. At least pretty much none of the attackers were shooting. So the only bullets he had to worry about where the ones shot by his own allies. That wasn't that much better because pretty much everyone he knew was a terrible shot. With the exception of the Freelancers, of course, but Wash was babysitting Tucker and Carolina had gone for a round two with Sharkface. 

It looked pretty bad here. Things had started out pretty well, with only a small number of attackers that they'd been handling reasonably well with their advantage in weaponry, but more and more of them had started pouring in, like a horde in a zombie game. And even that would've been fine, they could've handled the new arrivals fine, if the older arrivals would just stop getting up. Killing the same people every three minutes was not something their resources could handle. It wasn't like the armies of Chorus had ever really been swimming in ammo and grenades. 

Simmons wasn't the only one who'd been forced to resort to hand to hand combat, and unfortunately, most of their troops weren't much better at it. Donut's grenades were pretty much the thing that kept most of them alive at this point, and even those were getting more and more rare. 

If there was one upside to all this, it was the fact that Grif was also fighting hand to hand by now, and was proving to be surprisingly hot while doing it. He wasn't any sort of fighting genius, their confrontations with Tex were enough to attest to that, but he was heavy and could punch pretty well. And he was immortal, now, too, so he could just plow through the enemies without much concern, and use the fact that he was wearing power armor while pretty much none of them were to his full advantage. 

Simmons had never seen him look so badass, and it was not a bad look for him, not at all. 

Palomo was also trying to use the same strategy, but it wasn't working out quite as well for him. At least he also had the advantage of being unable to die. 

"You got anything for me, Jensen?", he asked as he made his way to the front line armory they'd hastily erected at the entrance of the base. 

"Uh, no fir", she lisped. "I have fome more empty riflef, but that'f about it. Bitterf and Fmith went to fee if we have any more of the alien weaponf that are functional, but that'f about it." 

Well, he hadn't been expecting much else. He was far from the only person who was clamoring for Jensen's attention, but he'd hoped that maybe his superior rank would help get him some bullets. Not that it had been a realistic hope, but still. 

He turned back to the battlefield. The space pirates' guts repaired themselves without cleaning up the mess their exposure had left, so the entrance to the cave looked like a massacre had taken place. Was taking place, really. At least so far they'd been able to stop any of their attackers from entering the base proper. He hoped the troops at the other entrances were holding up as well, because he really didn't feel like turning around to see some more alienified mercs rushing at them from behind. If that happened, they would most definitely be screwed. 

At this point he was almost hoping Tucker and Wash would hurry up and just do their thing so that this battle could be over. Their chances of holding this position were dwindling by the minute. But he also really hoped Tucker wouldn't. But he definitely understood why they had to do this, now. 

He'd always understood, he just hadn't wanted to admit it to himself. 

His eyes found Grif again, not that far away from the barricades, plowing through alien mercs like a freight train. He was suddenly a lot more aware of the soreness of his ass from the night before, and he blushed inside his helmet. At least no one could tell. 

There were still more mercs coming from the mountains. It was probably a matter of minutes until this was all over, and all of Simmons' instincts were screaming at him to just get out of there, and hide in some nook or cranny. A brave man's instincts they were not. 

But he couldn't do that. He didn't have any weapons except for an awesome robot arm and he didn't want to go back out there. But he was a Captain now. And that meant something. His entire career he'd been hoping for a promotion like that, to be a leader, to command respect. 

And that came with its drawbacks and that meant he couldn't just tuck tail and run when everyone's lives where on the line.

 _Today is a good day to die_ , Sarge's voice reminded him in his head. _Can't we push dying to a week from friday? - Let's all take dying as an open action item and come back with suggestions next meeting._

_No. It has to be today._

It hadn't actually had to be that day, back then, but for the first time Simmons understood the sentiment of a good day to die. 

He'd finally confessed his love for Grif, they'd even had a chance to go further than that, and he was here, defending a group of people he actually cared about. There were worse ways to go. 

And with that sentiment, he set his shoulders and went back to the battle field. He hoped he looked appropriately cool and badass, though stopping to ask someone if he did was the most surefire way to destroy any good image he'd been trying to cultivate.

He introduced himself back to the battle by punching an alien straight in the jaw. It was probably one of the coolest thing he'd ever done, even if it wasn't a real alien. At least he was gonna go out on a high note. 

He also discovered that he wasn't completely terrible at punching people. Now that he'd somewhat accepted that he might die, and was just focusing on doing a good job punching mercs, he remembered some of the lessons from drills that Sarge had run with them. They'd all been pretty hopeless at hand to hand. Partially because Sarge insisted on Grif being the punching bag, and Simmons had never really wanted to hurt him, so he'd mostly been throwing sissy punches to be nice. 

After a few alien punches he found himself back to back with Grif, which was also a whole lot more cool looking than either of them had the right to be, but damn it felt good to have his teammate… no not teammate, his boyfriend at his side. 

"Having a good time?", Grif asked. He was probably trying for nonchalant but he was panting way too much for that to work. 

"I'd probably be having a better time if I had a weapon", Simmons lamented. It only then occurred to him that he'd probably been supposed to reply with some cool badass line about how easy this was or something. 

"Looks like your robot arm is doing a pretty good job. You punch like a fucking terminator." 

Simmons blushed again at the compliment. The robot arm was actually doing a pretty good job, but it also had the drawback that he could only throw effective punches with one side, so he kept having to awkwardly readjust his balance when going for another one. 

He was weirdly overbalanced when he punched the next alien, but to his luck the punch seemed to be enough to make it go down, so Simmons had time to regain his footing before it got up again. 

Except it didn't. 

It took him a moment to process the thumping noise that was suddenly filling the battlefield, until he realized that it was the sound of bodies hitting the floor one after another.

They'd done it. 

The battle was over. 

Instead of relief, Simmons felt instant panic and he turned around to where Grif had thankfully not fallen yet. He threw himself into his arms, heedless of whether or not any of their enemies were still in fighting shape, because this was more important. Well, getting shot in the head during this moment would be a fucking stupid way to go, but he couldn't find it in himself to care. No one had ammo anymore, anyway. 

"Grif", he wailed, sounding probably the least manly he ever had and that was saying something. 

"Simmons", Grif said, and the fear in his voice reminded him of when he'd fell down the cliff and his hand had slipped from Simmons' grip… Simmons squeezed tighter, even though he knew nothing he did could keep Grif from slipping this time. 

"I love you", he choked out. He might've said it yesterday, he didn't remember exactly, last night was a bit of a blur of endorphins and dread, but this was important, and it needed to be said, if not now then maybe never and that just wasn't okay. 

"I love you, too", Grif said, and it was everything Simmons could ever wish for, but it also hurt his heart like a dagger. They had this, now, finally, after so long, and now they were about to lose it. It just wasn't fair. 

"I'm sorry I had my head stuck so far up my ass", he found himself saying. "We could've had this way earlier and I was just a homophobic idiot, and I blew it and I'm sorry." 

"Don't worry about it, I didn't say anything either, and I could've, but I was scared and stupid, so you know, whatever", Grif said. Apparently still trying for nonchalant, but judging from his tone he was either close to tears or already crying. 

"We're both really hopeless idiots", Simmons admitted. "But I'm glad I found you. All of the shit that happened to us, with Project Freelancer and the fucking Simulation War and now this War… you made it all worth it." 

"That's…" Simmons could feel the sharp intake of breath that might've been a sob, from where he was holding onto Grif. "You know when Sarge asked why we're here? Like, why I'm still here and I never left even if no one would've stopped me? You're why. That's why I stayed, that's why I'm here." 

Oh great. Now Grif had done it. Now Simmons was crying and it hadn't even happened yet. When Grif had really been dead, Simmons had never felt as miserable as he did now. At least no one could see the tears and snot that were starting to drip down, but that also meant that he couldn't wipe them away. A pretty crier, Simmons was not. 

He couldn't think of anything to say to what Grif had said, couldn't pick what his last words to him should be, so he chose just to cling as tightly as he could, get the moment to last as long as possible before he had to let go. 

Come to think of it, the moment had been lasting surprisingly long, already. The sound of bodies dropping had already stopped quite a while back, but here Grif was, standing and breathing and being crushed by Simmons a bit. He chanced a look at his HUD and discovered that it didn't read any hostile forces. 

"So… uh", Grif said after a moment. A pretty long moment, really, and here he was, still fine. 

"Yeah?", Simmons sniffled. 

"Can't help but notice that I'm not dead yet", Grif ventured. 

"Yeah, yeah I noticed that." 

"Kinda actually looks like maybe it's not actually happening." 

"Well, that's nice", Simmons said. That would really be nice. It would be pretty much exactly what Simmons was hoping for.

"Yeah, but that also makes this whole scene kinda awkward." 

"Tiny bit", Simmons agreed. Didn't stop him from clinging to Grif, but he loosened his grip a tiny bit, because keeping up a hug that tight for this long was actually a surprising amount of work. 

"You could… maybe let go, till we figure this all out?", Grif suggested. He probably had a point. No matter how heartfelt, hugging someone while both of you were in full body armor wasn't exactly comfortable for either party. 

"What? Noooo, guys, this is such a sweet moment, I need to get some more pictures", Donut's voice came from somewhere to Simmons' left. That was enough to finally make him let go, only to discover that half the army was looking at the two of them, Donut at the front with his hands clasped together under his chin, 

"Piss off, Donut", Simmons said. His voice was still thick with tears, so it didn't exactly sound all that intimidating. 

"What? That was the most romantic thing I've ever seen, no need to get embarrassed about it", Donut protested. "That was really sweet." 

"We looked really badass on the battlefield before bodies started dropping", Grif commented to Simmons. 

"Yeah, fighting off aliens barehanded, that was pretty cool", Simmons agreed. 

"We kinda ruined that image with this, didn't we?" 

"Yeah, pretty much." Simmons looked around to see Palomo and Jensen clinging together in a way that didn't look any more dignified than what Simmons and Grif had just pulled off. Palomo was also delightfully alive, still. 

"Worth it, though", Grif said quietly, so that really only Simmons could hear. He felt another blush rising in his cheeks as he heard that. 

"Yeah", he agreed. "Absolutely worth it." And then he released the seals on his helmet and threw it to the ground before pulling off Grif's too, and planting a kiss right on his lips. They'd already embarrassed themselves in front of everyone by confessing their love, so why not go a little further. As he felt Grif reciprocate he knew it had been a good decision. 

 

* * *

 

There was a noise like a bag of potatoes dropping. 

"Ow", came Wash's voice from the other room, but it sounded more sarcastic than pained. Tucker deactivated the sword again. 

"I'm gonna go check on Wash", he told Church and attached it to his hip. When he turned the corner so he could see where Wash was, again, the man in question was pushing Felix's unmoving form off him. 

"You know, for such a skinny weasel person, Felix is surprisingly heavy", Wash said as he got up from where he'd been sitting on the floor. "So… you did it?" 

"… Yeah", Tucker breathed out. He'd never felt quite this empty before, but there was something oddly satisfying about seeing Felix's body just lying there discarded on the floor. Saved the sentient trashcan right. 

Almost made it worth it. Except it really didn't. Nothing about Felix was worth anything of anyone else's, least of all his friends…

"So… what about…?", Wash trailed off without really asking. He took back the sword handle and activated it. It glowed steadily.

"I… I don't…", Tucker didn't want to think about Grif and Palomo and Matthews falling down and lying unmoving in the dirt like Felix, but he didn't even have to imagine it. It hadn't even been a week since it had happened, and he knew full well how awful it was. He was sort of glad that he didn't have to be there to face it this time, and felt horrible for his relief.

Wash's sword flickered and turned off again. 

"What?", Wash shrieked and pushed himself to his feet, gun trained at Felix before Tucker could even process what that meant. 

"Wha… you think it didn't work?", Tucker asked, hastily pulling out his own gun and pointing it at Felix. But there was no movement. 

Wash stepped closer and very carefully bent down to remove Felix's helmet. The glassy eyes staring back at them were devoid of life. Tucker knew that Felix was a good actor, but this didn't feel fake. Wash's fingers found their way to his neck. 

"No pulse", he stated. 

"But… then why's the sword not working? I mean, it didn't work for you because Felix was alive and it didn't work for him because Doyle was alive, but… I mean neither of those would be…" Tucker trailed off, thinking. "Wait, what it Doyle's still alive?" 

"What? But how would he…" 

"I don't know, dude", Tucker said, his thoughts already racing. Felix was definitely dead, but if Doyle wasn't… did that mean all the people that got resurrected by aliens were still kicking… was this bad or good. "Church, what the fuck is going on, what did your computer thing do?"

There was no answer. 

"Epsilon? Come on, cut it out, you monitored the whole thing, didn't you?", Wash asked, sounding impatient just like Tucker felt. There was no reply again. 

A very bad feeling was rising up in Tucker's gut. "Church?" 

An AI materialized in front of them, but it wasn't the one that they'd been looking for. 

"Santa?", Wash asked. "What's going on, where is Epsilon?" 

"I have a message for you, from the artificial intelligence construct known as Epsilon…" 

 

* * *

 

"Are you sure about this?", Santa asked Church as he was watching Tucker activate the sword in their slowed time frame. 

"Yeah, sort of", Church said. "I mean, not completely… half sure, maybe. But my calculations are right, though, we can pull this off if I do this?" 

"I believe you are correct", Santa agreed. "But are you certain that that is the best choice for you? Is this worth it?" 

"If it works, then yeah", Church said, and he felt it, too. He knew that the fragments agreed, even the more… complicated ones. If there was was any group of people this was worth doing for, then it was these idiots. 

"Then I defer to your judgment." 

"So, you'll help me?" 

"Naturally", Santa replied.

"Awesome. Okay, you have the message I put together for the UNSC? Tucker just has to activate the sigil at the communication tower and you can send it to everyone in the galaxy?"

"That is correct." 

"Great. So… uh, can you do me another favor? I'm gonna make another recording, can you get that to the people I designate?" 

"Yes, of course." 

"Alright, then. D, start a recording for me." He took a moment to center himself, take a deep breath, if he had lungs. Metaphorically at least. 

"If you're listening to this, that means you made it…" 


End file.
